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PRAIRIE FIRE

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTIONARY
ANTI-IMPERIALISM

POLITICAL STATEMENT
OF THE

hUBArUBO

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T'ons.

PRAIRIE FIRE

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTIONARY
ANTI-IMPERIALISM

POUTICAL STATEMENT
OF THE

WEATHER

UNDERGROUND

The publisher’s copyright is not intended to discourage the use of material from
this hook for political debate and study. It is intended to prevent false and
distorted reproduction and profiteering. Aside from those limits, people are free
to utilize the material.

This edition is a copy of the original which was
Printed Underground
In the US
For The People

Published by Communications Co.
1974

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May 9, 1974

Sisters and brothers^

Here is PRAIRIE FIRE, our political ideology —a strategy for
anti-imperialism and revolution inside the imperial US, It comes out of our
own practice of the last five years and reflects a diversity of experiences*
This paper is not the product of one or two people, nor even a small handful
of us. Rather PRAIRIE FIRE represents the politics and collective efforts of
an organization. It has been the focus of our study groups and our political
education. It has been chewed on and shaped in countless conversations,
struggles and written pages. It has travelled around the country, growing,
developing thru the attempt to understand the shape of world forces and the
revolutionary possibilities before us. The paper was rewritten four times and
collectively adopted as the political statement of the Weather Underground,
The twelve-month process of writing PRAIRIE FIRE, squeezed between
on-going work and practice and action, has now reached a kind of end-point,
A cycle is done.

We undertook this analysis to explain the changes in US and world
conditions since the Vietnam ceasefire and to evaluate the consequences of
the Vietnamese victory. We have come some distance in evaluating the
political situation, the priorities for revolutionary work since we began this
writing. Now many more revolutionaries will need to shape and change the
paper. The politics cannot be realized unless and until the content of the
program is activated in thousands of situations, among thousands of people
in the coming period, PRAIRIE FIRE will be a growing thing*

We hope the paper opens a dialectic among those in the mass and
clandestine movements: we hope people will take PRAIRIE FIRE as
seriously as we do, study the content and write and publish their views of
the paper as well as their analysis of their own practice. We will respond as
best we can.

Our movement urgently needs a concrete analysis of the particular
conditions of our time and place, W^e need strategy* We need to battle for a

correct ideology and win people over. In this way we create the conditions
for the development of a successful revolutionary movement and party. We
need a revolutionary communist party in order to lead the struggle, give
coherence and direction to the fight, seize power and build the new society.
Getting from here to there is a process of coming together in a disciplined
w^ay around ideology and strategy, developing an analysis of our real
conditions, mobilizing a base among the US people, building principled
relationships to Third World struggle, and accumulating practice in struggle
against US imperialism*

PRAIRIE FIRE is written to communist-minded people,
independent organizers and anti -imperialists; those who carry the traditions
and lessons of the struggles of the last decade, those who join in the struggles
of today. PRAIRIE FIRE is written to all sisters and brothers who are
engaged in armed struggle against the enemy* It is written to prisoners,
women’s groups, collectives, study groups, workers’ organizing committees,
communes, G1 organizers, consciousness-raising groups, veterans, community
groups and revolutionaries of all kinds; to all who will read, criticize and
bring its content to life in practice* It is written as an argument against those
who oppose action and hold back the struggle.

PRAIRIE FIRE is based on a belief that the duty of a revolutionary
is to make the revolution. This is not an abstraction. It means that
revalu tionaries must make a profound commitment to the future of
humanity, apply our limited knowledge and experience to understand an
ever-changing situation, organize the masses of people and build the fight. It
means that struggle and risk and hard work and adversity will become a way of
life, that the only certainty will be constant change, that the only
possibililics are victory or death.

We have only begun. At this time, the unity and consolidation of
anti-imperialist forces around a revolutionary program is an urgent and
pressing strategic necessity. PRAIRIE FIRE is offered as a contribution to
this unity of action and purpose, >fow it is in your hands.

for the Weather Underground

Bernardine Dohrn
Billy Ayers
Jeff Jones
Celia Sojourn

CONTENTS

I. ARM THE SPIRIT 1

THE BANNER OF CHE

WHY IS REVOLUTION NECESSARY ?

IN THE EARLY STAGES
THE SIXTIES

ACHIEVEMENTS
TURNING POINT
SELF-CRITICISM

TURNING WEAKNESS INTO STRENGTH
OBSTACLES

ANTI-REVOLUTIONARY ERRORS IN OUR
MOVEMENT

SETBACKS INFLICTED BY THE STATE
CONTINUING CRISIS AT HOME
GOVERNMENTAL CRISIS
THE REAL AND PHONY ENERGY CRISIS
WHAT WE THINK

II. VIETNAM 27

MEANING OF THE CEASEFIRE
INTERNATIONAL VICTORY
NATIONAL VICTORY
ALL FOR VIETNAM

SUPPORT THE VIETNAMESE STRUGGLE
FOUR MAIN ISSUES

ATTACKS ON LIBERATED ZONES
NO AID TO THIEU
HEALING THE WOUNDS OF WAR
POLITICAL PRISONERS

A PROGRAM TO FOCUS ON VIETNAM

JUSTICE TO WAR CRIMINALS: AMNESTY FOR
RESISTERS

THE WAR TO EXPLAIN THE WAR
THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY
GOVERNMENT OF SOUTH VIETNAM

III. ON THE ROAD: IMPRESSIONS OF US HISTORY

IN THE BEGINNING; Genocide, Slavery, Racism
NATIVE AMERICAN RESISTANCE; The Early Stages
BLACK RESISTANCE TO SLAVERY AND THE RISE OF
THE ABOLITIONIST AND WOMEN’S MOVEMENTS
RECONSTRUCTION AND BETRAYAL
THE OPPOSITION; Miners, W’omen, Immigrants, Wobbiies
THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND THE COMMUNIST
PARTY

IV. IMPERIALISM IN CRISIS: THE THIRD WORLD 79

MONOPOLY CAPITAL

IMPERIALISM MEANS UNDERDEVELOPMENT
IMPERIALISM MEANS RACISM AND GENOfRDE
IMPERIALISM MEANS SEXISM
NEOCOLONIALISM

DEFEATS FOR NEOCOLONIALISM
VIOLENT COUNTERREVOLUTION
CHANGES IN WORLD POLITICS
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES
PUERTO RICO
GUINE -BISSAU

THE PALESTINIAN LIBERATION MOVEMENT

V. IMPERIALISM IN CRISIS: THE HOME FRONT 109

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

THE ANARCHY OF PRODUCTION
THE CONDITIONS OF LIFE
THE CHANGING NATURE OF THE
WORKING CLASS

BLACK AND OTHER THIRD WORLD PEOPLE IN THE US
THE BLACK NATION
—Institutions of Racism
—Black Culture, Black Power
—Support for Self-determination
NATIVE AMERICANS
THE CHICANO STRUGGLE

THE RISING OF WOMEN

THE CONDITION OF WOMEN

—Home and Family

— G o ver n men t Poli cies

—Culture of Sexism

THE WOMEN’S .MOVEMENT

TASKS FOR REVOLUTIONARY WOMEN

—0\^r coming Class Privilege

— Opposijig Racism

-Insurgent Institutions

—Militancy

THE YOUTH REBELLION
YOUTH CULTURE
THE ARMED FORCES

VI. AGAINST THE COMMON ENEMY

GO TO THE PEOPLE
POLITICS IN COMMAND

INTERNATIONALISM
WOMEN AND REVOLUTION
MILITANCY

REVOLUTION

lf)0 5e/ lo olfid2|...

50tiniYielt/i(b

SINGLE SPARK
CAN START
A PRAIRIE FIRE

CcjO

That is good, because revolutionary spirit must always
be present, revolutionary spirit must reveal itself. We must
arm our spirit. When the spirit is armed, the people are strong,

Fidel Castro
Santiago, Chile
November 29 . 1971

The unique and furidamental eondiliort of this Lime is the decline of
US imperialism. Our society is in social and economic crisis and assumptions
about the US are turned on their heads. These arc luird conditions to live
through. But they are favorahle for the peofde and for revolution.

These conditions of constant change demand the weapon of theory.
Like people everywhere, w e are analyzing how^ to bring to life the potential
forces which can destroy I S imperialism.

We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men,
underground in the United States for more than four years. We are deeply
affected by the historic events of our time in the struggle against US
imperialism.

Our intention is to disrupt the empire ... to incapacitate it, to put
pressure on the cracks, to make it hard to carry out its bloody functioning
against the people of the world, to join the world struggle, to attack from
the inside.

Our intention is to engage the enemy . , . to w^ear away at him, to
harass him, to isolate him, to expose every weakness, to pounce, to reveal his
vulnerability.

Our intention is to encourage the people ... to provoke leaps in
confidence and consciousness, to stir the irnagiiiatiorn lo popularize pow^er,
to agitate, to organize, to join in every way possible the people’s day-to-day
struggles.

Our intention is to forge an underground ... a clandestine political
organization engaged in every form of struggle, protetded from the eyes and
weapons of the state, a base against repression, to accumulate lessons,
experience and constant practice, a base from %vhich to attack.

]

THE BANNER OF CHE

The only path to the final defeat of imperialiisn^ and the bviildiri^ of
socialisin h revolutionary war. Revolution is the most powerfuS resuuree of
the people. To wait, to not prepare people for the fight, is to seriously
mislead about what kind of fierce struggle lies ahead.

Revolutionary war will be complicated and protracted. It includes
mass struggle and clandestine struggle, peaceful and violent, political and
economic, cultural and military, where all forms are developed in harmony
with the armed struggle.

Without mass struggle there can be no revolution.

Without armed struggle there can be no victory.

It will not be immediate, for the enemy is entrenched and
intractable. It will require lengthy, deliberate political and armed struggle
to build the organized power of the people and to wear away at the power of
tlic enemy. Many people have given their lives in this siruggie and many
more will have to. Paradoxically, this protracted struggle is the shorle.st and
least costly road to revolution.

We are at an early stage, going from small to large. The mass armed
capability which will destroy the enemy has its beginnings in armed action.
It matures unevenly, with setbacks and at great cost. It wdll not spring
fuibblown on the scene at the magical moment of insurrection. We cannot
leave the organizing and preparation for armed struggle to some more perfect
fiilurc time. It would be suicidal. There is no predcterminerl model for
revolution —we are always figuring it out. But for some, armed struggle is
always too soon, although it is underway here and around tbe world.

We made the choice to become a guerrilla organization at a time
wljcn the Vietnamese were fighting a heroic people's war, defeating half a
miHion US troops and the most technoiogicaily advanced military power. Jn
our ow'ii hemisphere, Che Guevara urged that we "‘create two, tliree, many
Vietnams/’ to destroy US imperialism by cutting it off m tlie Third World
tentacle by tentacle, and opening another front within tlie US itself. At
home, the struggle and insurrection of the Black liberation movement
l!cigtiten<‘d our commitment to fight alongside the determined enemies of
the empire.

This defim^d our international responsibility and our duty as white
rcvoluUouaries inside the oppressor nation. We are part of a wave of
rcAoiuLion sparked by the Black liberation struggle, by the death of Che in
Bolivia in 1967, and by people’s war in Vietnam, This period forged otir
belief in the revolutionary necessity of clandestine organization and armed
sli’uggh^

WHY IS REVOLUTION NECESSARY

Revolution is a fight by the people for power. It is a changing of
powcT in which existing social and economic relations are turned upside
down. It is a fight for w^ho run things, in particular, for control by the
people of whal we communists call the means of production -the means by
which people eat, work, protect themselves from the cold am! the rain, get
aroujui. raise children and build.

The imperialists now control the means by whicli these necessities of
... produced and distributed* They determine what gets produced,

: v" cost in human effort, under what conditions, and who gets what's
■ ;ed. This is complete control over people’s lives, ll is eeonomic power
'.Hr more. It involves and implicates people in a system over which ihcy
_ - jltlc control; a system w^hich includes unprecedented slaughter
' .:z\i continuous wars, genocide, the violent suppression of Black, Puerto
. Chicano, and Indian people, the subjugation of women, daily control
^ -xtvaction of maximum profit from the people’s v^ork, the development
lantastic arsenal of weapons (including nuclear arms) in the control of
.- jiTipf^rialists, It intimately affects day-to-day behavior —thoughts, values,
:^f;tial and hopes*

Only the pressure of the struggle of the mass of people humanizes
: -ystem at alL

It is an illusion that imperialism will decay peacefully. Imperialism
- meant constant w^arJmperialistsdefend their control of the means of life
.id terrible force. There is no reason to believe they will become humane or
■ jnquish power* As matters deteriorate for imperialism, there is every
.'T ^^on to believe they will tighten conti'ol, pass their contradictions on to
XlC people, and struggle for every last bit of power. To not prepare the
people for this struggle is to disarm them ideologically and physically and to
perpetrate a cruel hoax.

IN THE EARLY STAGES

Armed struggle has come into being in the United States, It is an
indication of growdh that our movement has developed clandestine
organizations and that \ve are learning how to fight.

The development of guerrilla organization and armed activity against

the state is most advanced in the Black community* where the tradition and

necessity for resistance is highest. The crises of the society provide the
training grounds; for Thii'd World people the conditions of prison, the
army, the streets and most oppressive jobs produce warriors, political
theorists, and active strategists.

The Black Liberation .A.rnay —fighting for three years under ruthless
attack by the state— the fighters in prisons, and recently the Symbionese
Liberation Army are leading forces in the development of the armed struggle
and political consciousness, respected by ourselves and other revolutionaries.

At this early stage in the armed and clandestine .struggle, our forms
of combat and confrontation are few and precise. Our organized forces are
small, the enemy’s forces are huge. We live inside the oppressor nation,
particularly suited to urban guerrilla warfare. We are strategically situated in
the nerve centers of the international empire, where the institutions and
symbols of imperial power are concentrated. The cities will be a major
battleground, for the overwhelming majority of people live in the cities; the
cities are our terrain.

We believe that carrying out armed struggle will affect the people’s
consciousness of the nature of the struggle against the state. By bcgimiiiig
the armed struggle, the awareness of its necessity will be furthered. 'I’his is no
less true in the US than in other countries tliroughout the world.
Revolutionary action generates revolutionary consciousness; growing

consciousness develops revolutionary action. Action teaches the lessons of
fighting, and demonstrates that armed struggle is possible.

We are building a foundation. In four years of armed work, we have
come to appreciate the complexity of doing it right and the difficulty of
sustaining it. These arc contradictions we are working with:

—We live in a whirlwind; nonetheless, time is on the side of the
guerrillas* Fighting the enemy is urgent, and u^e have a duty to do all we can*
Yet it takes time to win the people’s trust; it takes time to build an
organization capable of surviving the hunt; it takes time to recover and learn
from mistakes, to prepare, train, study and investigate* This is an
observation. It is not offered as an argument for delay,

—There is constant resolulion between carrying forward the struggle
and the necessity of preserving valuable cadre and supporters* Sometimes
this ijT not a matter of choice —the guerrillas are forced, because of the
torture and m^irder committed by the repressive apparatus, to escalate and
move beyond wliat can be immediately sustained*

—Armed struggle brings the resistance to a sharper and deeper level
of development* The greater the resistance, the greater will be the force
and scope of the state repression brought to bear upon the people. When
resistance is at a high level, tbc CTicmy takes measures against the people* But
treading lightly will not assuage the rulers. Violent repression is built into the
status quo. Guerrilla strategy has to resolve the contradiction between the
necessary progress of the struggle and what the people can sustain at any
given time*

— Armed actions push forward people’s consciousness and
commitment: they are a great teacher and example* Yet they must be clearly
understandable to the people, identify our enemy precisely, and overcome
his massive lies and propaganda*

Attacks by the Weather Underground have been focused and
specific* These actions were a catalyst for thousands of politically-directed
armed actions between 1970 and 1972, almost all of which complemented
mass struggles*

These bombings were carried out by the Weather Underground:

-To retaliate for the most savage criminal attacks against Black and
Third World people, especially by the police apparatus:

•• Haymarkct police statue* Chicago, October 1969 and October 1970;
Chicago police ears, following the murder of Fred Hampton and
Mark Clark, De('ember 1969;

•• New York City Police Ileadquaters, June 1970;

•• Marin County Courthouse, following the murder of Jonathan
Jackson, William Christmas and James McClain, August 1970;

•• Long Island City Courthouse, in Queens, in solidarity with prison
revolts taking place in New York City, October 1970;

•• Department of Corrections in San Francisco and

Office of California Prisons in Sacramento, for the murder of
George Jackson in San Quentin, August 1971;

•• Department of Corrections in Albany, N,Y,, for the murder and
assault against the prisoners of Attica, September 1971;

•• 103rd Precinct of the New York City police, for the murder of
10-year-old Clifford Clover, May 1973 * , ,

—To disrupt and agitate against US aggression and terror against
Vietnam and the Third Worid:

Harvard war research Center for International Affairs, Proud Eagle
Tribe (women’s brigade), October 1970;

•• US Capitol, after the invasion of Laos, March 1971;

•• MIT research center, William Bundy’s office, Proud Eagle Tribe
(women’s brigade), October 1971;

•• The Pentagon, after the bombing of Hanoi and mining of the
harbors of North Vietnam, May 1972;

Draft and recruiting centers;

•• ROTC buildings;

ITT L at in America Headquarters, following the fascist
counter-revolution in Chile, September 1973 . , ,

—To expose and focus attention against the powder and institutions
which most cruelty oppress, exploit and delude the people:

National Guard Headquarters, Washington, D,C*, after the murders
at Jackson State and'Kent State, May 1970;

• • Presidio Army Base and MP Station, San Francisco, July 26, 1970;

•• Federal Offices of HEW (Health, Education and Welfare), (women’s
brigade), San Francisco, March 1974;

•• Liberation of Timothy Leary trom California Men’s Colony, San Luis
Obispo, September 1970 , * .

Mass struggle and movements are not mere spectators in
revolutionary war; armed struggle cannot become a spectacle* It is the
responsibility of mass leaders and organizations to encourage and support
revolutionary armed struggle, in open as well as quiet ways. Actions are more
powerful when they are explained and defended. The political thrust of each
armed intervention can be publicly championed and built on. Parallel mass
support will further both the mass and military struggle.

There arc many faces to militant resistance and fighting, a
continuum between guerrilla and mass w^ork. An examination of recent
history points to: acts of resistance . . . draft card burnings, sabotage in the
military, on the job, in government, and attacks on the police; mass
demonstrations - . , Marches on the Pentagon, Stop the Draft Week, African
Liberation Day rallies, International Women’s Day marches, Chicano
Moratorium marches; demands for control and power through seizures of
institutions . . , community control of hospitals and schools, occupations of
land such as Wounded Knee, or symbols such as the Statue of Liberty,
People’s Park, prison rebellions and takeovers: clandestine

popaganda . . . spray painting, pouring blood on draft files, the Media, Pa.
FBI rip off; popular rebellion . . , Watts, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Newark;
outrage expressed violently and coltectively . . , Jackson/Kent/Cambodia,
bank burning at Isla Vista, TDA’s, Days of Rage.

There are connecting lines between these different forms of fighting*
All are forms of resistance by the people, and forms of attack against the
state. Militancy and armed struggle are consistent threads in revolutionary
movements -they cannot be wished or forced away. They will continue to
be practiced as long as imperialism exists. Together they constitute the
fullness of revolutionary w^ar*

# # *

The greater pari of the revolution remains before us. We need to
evaluate our strengths and weaknesses to go on from here. Our present
strategy is rooted in our interpretation of the struggles of the last fourteen
years.

THE SIXTIES

Denunciations of the struggles of the sixties as a failure do tlie
enemy's work. These surrenders are a live burial of our people's great
moments, and weaken the future by poisoning the lessons of the past. The

movement produced some of the highest expressions of international
solidarity and commitment in an oppressor nation. Weaknesses there were
plenty. We cannot evade them, ignore them nor be reluctant to learn from
them. But the lessons w^on’t be drawn apart from tlie context —where we
were coming from and how far w^e still have to go to revolutionize ourselves
and society.

ACHIEVEMENTS

The struggles of the 60's changed everything, and we strongly affirm
the general thrust and direction of the politics and movements of the last
decade. The achievements only represent beginnings, but timy ai’c not small:

Desanetification of the empire. The lesson that the US Imperial
system is not permanently superior, not invincible even at the height of its
power, not loved by the people of the world, and not satisfying the needs of
the great majority of the US people -this is of incalculable importance to
the awakening of consciousness. In this year of cynicism about the US rulers
it is hard to remember the power of the mytlis of US irivincihility and
democracy which governed our people at the bcgijining of the 60’s,
Although US global aims had already been rocked by the success of the
Chinese Revolution in 1949, the struggles for African independence through
the 1950's and the failure to win in Korea, the implications of all this were
not known by the US people. The forces unleashed at Little Rock and
Montgomery and the triumph of the Cuban Revolution were already
burrowdng away at the edifice of US superiority, yet we w^ere still asleep.

People now see that imperialism is warlike, with an economy based
on the arms race, defense spending and a need to support expansion with the
bloodiest interventions in history. People understand corporate gi'eed: tiie
criminal policies of ITT, United Fruit, Standard Oil, Gulf Oil, Dow
Chemical, Chase Manhattan, Safew^ay, and Honeywell. People can now see
the hypocrisy of US freedom, justice and democracy —high sounding words
masking the fact of US exploitation, aggression and counter-revolution.

Material contribution to Vietnamese victory. The anti-war
movement made a significant contribution toward Forcing the US
government to withdraw troops from Vietnam. As part of the worldwide
united front against imperialism our movement helped prevent the use of

nuclear weapons against Vietnam, a major assaidt on the dike system, or an
invasion of the Morth* The ruling class is not restrained by scruples —only by
theii* estiniitioii of the polilical consequences of their actions. The imperial
army became an unreliable tool of domination There were serious
mterruptions in the functioning of the draft. In addition, part of the anti-war
movement saw through the blinders of national chauvinism and brought a
glimpse to the US people of the righteousness and humanity of the so-called
'enemy/’

Opposition to racism. The spirit of resistance inside the US was
rekindled by Black people. The power and strategy of t!ie civil rights
movement, SNCC, Malcolm X, and the lilack Panther Party affected all other
rebeHiom They created a form of struggle ^called direct action; awoke a
common identity, history and dignity for Black people as a colonized and
oppressed people within the US; drew out and revealed the ermrny through a
senes of just and uJideniable demands such as the vote, equal education, the
rigiit to self- defense, and an end to Jim Crow, The police, the troops, the
siicriffs, the mass aircsts and assassinations were the official response. The
Black movement was pushed forward into a revolutionary movement for
political power, open rebellion and confrontation with the racism of white
people and the racism of institutions.

Growtli ol‘ insurgent cultur<-s. Young women and mer^ figlitiug to be
liumaii beings Tn the midst of disgusting and crushing social forms found
ourselves in opposition to empire. Since World War II imperialism sought to
tamo its youth thru tracked education, the draft, the oppression of
women, I'hese conditions produced a profound alienation in work, school,
family, and an openness to revolutionary alternative. The youth revolt and
the womeiTs movement moved practically an entire generation on one level
or aiiother. This means a substantial sector was torn away from sexist and
competitive cultiire and gave birth to new cultures, IViigile bid real -cultures
in opposition to the system. The ovcrtlnowing of rotten values of male
suprenia<yv, consumerism, passivity, respectahility and the rat race, was a
wruiderful advance. For women wwking, for women forced into the
marriage marketplace, trapped in oppressive relationships, raising children
aifinc, tlie wometTs movement brought a new sense of sidf-wortli and
dignity; it explained the conditions of womer/s oppression. We began to
create solidarity among women.

Challenge to inaction. We inherited a deadening ideology of
confonuTty and gi'adualism. Our first protests were law-aldding and
peaceful. But !hc treacherous nature of US power was revealed as we began
to comprehend Hiroshima, napalm, slavery, lynching, capital punishment,
rape, Indian reservations. W^e came to see that change is vioiently opposed
every step of the way. We stood up and defied propriety, the state and the
law, in street demonstrations and outrageous actions. Militant confrontation
politics transformed us, we broke with a powerless past. We saw popular
uprisings, armed revolution, people’s war, and guerrilla combat around the
world. W^c realized the power of armed self-defense, mass rebellion and
revolutionary violence in the Black movement. As our own protest elicited
teargas, prison and bullets, w^e recognized the need to fight and the terrible
cost of not doing all we possibly can.

TURNING POINT

The year 1968 was a high point and a turning point. It is not
surprising that the maturing of the movement took place at a time when the
world was in flames. 500,000 US troops were dealt a staggering blow by the
Vietnamese popular forces during Tet. Armed struggle raged throughout
Latin America and the Palestinian liberation forces emerged in the Mideast,
Student movements in France and throughout the industrialized world were
in full revolt, challenging theh own governments and demonstrating open
solidarity with the people of the world. The Cliinese Cultural Revolution was
unleashing a new dimension to class struggle.

The movement emerged with a growing revolutionary consciousness
that it was involved in a battle for power. This grew out of experience. Black
Power had become the slogan for the Black liberation movement, and its
political thrust transformed the civil rights movement. Black power was
applied in persistent struggles for community control of schools, in
rebellions in 60 cities following the assassination of Martin Luther King, by
Black students occupying universities, sometimes wth arms, and in the
emergence of the Black Paiither Party.

We also came to recognize that issues which once seemed separate
had a relationship to one another. Imperialism was “discovered” as a whole,
one system. This was a tremendous political breakthrough -it made sense of
the world and our own experience. The same school which tracked students
by sex, race and class into the appropriate niche, turned out to own slums in
the Black community and to develop anti-personnel weapons and strategies
against revolution— to be in fact a tool of the corporations and the military.

We were up against a ruling class, and it made no sense to ask them
to reform themselves. Our rebellion had led us to revolution —a long and
many-sided struggle for power.

SDS was a leading anti-imperialist organization in this movement.
Historically, students play an advanced and militant role in anti-imperialist
struggle, opposing war and racial injustice. The revolt at Columbia University
was a catalyst which exploded the previous era of resistance into a popular
revolutionary movement of students and young people. The street battles at
the Democratic .National Convention in Chicago sev'cral months later led to
further occupations and demonstrations involving hundreds of thousandsof
militants. The demonstrations built on each other; each struggle was unique
and beautiful. The vitality of SDS was rooted in its local experiences and the
application of national programs to different regions and conditions
—applying the lessons of Columbia, films on Cuba, building alliances with a
Black Student Union. The taste of liberation, the intense struggles,
transformed our identifications, our lives.

At this point, some new contradictions appeared.

The slate set into motion a plan to discredit, divide and set back the
movement. The May 1968 J. Edgar Hoover counterinsurgency memo revels
3 national plan to “expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize the activities of
the various New Left organizations, their leadership and adherents.”
Infiltration and .sabotage were carried out by a variety of police agents,
including the FBI, the Nixon-Mitchell team, military intelligence, and local
red squads. As always the attack was focused on the Black liberation

movement and included violent assaults against Black communities and
leaders, particularly the Black Panther Party.

With enormous growth of membership, militancy and consciousness
after the 1968 demonstrations in Chicago, SDS was faced with several urgent
necessities : to draw broader masses of people into the struggle, and also to
organize our cadre and transform ourselves into a force which could
eventuaUy contend for power. These necessities coexisted uneasily. What
were the roads taken at this juncture ?

Our strategy was the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM). It was
aimed at extending the movement among young people —to expand its base
and cla^ character, to mobilize those affected by the draft, the army,
unemployment, schools, prisons, into antidmperialist struggle. RYM was a
transitional strategy to maintain the militant mass base on the campuses,
while we deepened our base among the working class. Young people’s
openness and consciousness/identification with militant anti-imperialism was
a strategic strength. This movement continued to grow spontaneously, even
after the decline of SDS.

This politics was opposed by an opportunist politics that took the
form of economism. Economismappears in every revolutionary movement as
the reduction of revolution to a struggle for purely economic gains.
Economism has many masks. It was then expressed in a leftish form of
“going to the workers,” not by creating revolutionary consciousness and
action but by sacrificing principle in the hope of gaining a place in the labor
movement. This is a corrupt politics, proven bankrupt again and again. In the
US, where many of the people who are exploited by imperialism also receive
benefits from the super-exploitation of the colonies, economism feeds the
idea that people here can be free while other oppressed people are still under
the yoke of US imperialism.

Our deep political concern was the historic tendency of the white
left to abandon militant anti-imperialism and anti-racism —principled
support for Third World struggle— in search of easy integration \vith the
masses. It is difficult to synthesize militant anti-imperialism with a mass base
among oppressor-nation people because of the whole fabric of relative
social/material white-skin privilege. Much of the movement resolved this
contradiction in the direction of opportunism around race. This was the
main error of the period, deeply rooted in US radical history.

A comparable example was the student power movement. Some
argued that the demand for student’s rights and power would become
revolutionary in and of itself. This is not true. The chauvinism of “student
power” demands by white students ignored the claims of university workers,
the community, and the Third World people who would be the victims of
university-researched weapons and programs. This demand encouraged
narrow concern for a relatively privileged sector at the expense of the more
oppressed. But when the student revolts actively allied with other
movements in the interests of the most oppressed peoples against the
common enemy, they became a serious threat to the empire. When each
movement only sees its own claims and interests in isolation from other
movements, they play themselves out, one after the other.

Another major factor at this -point was the rebellion of women
against sexism in the society and in the left. The left is not immune from the
sexism which pervades US society: the oppressor culture persists and must

be opposed and fought again and again. This requires an active commitment
to anti -sexism. In the late sixties and early seventies many women left the
anti-imperialist movement and built a separate women’s movement. Sisters
inside —and now outside— the anti-imperiliast movement began to force men
to deal with their sexist practice. These were absolutely necessary advances.
The struggle,s against sexism did not only mean criticism and change of
individual practice, they also transformed the overall analysis of the left. The
Contradiction was that the women’s movement, rejecting sexist and
authoritarian leadership, raised blanket challenges to all forms of leadership
and organization in the movement, good and bad, and failed at that point to
build lasting organizations to carry on the task of strong determined
anti-imperialist struggle.

SDS was torn by these internal and external dynamics. It was
becoming an organization of revolutionaries, anti-imperialist activists. This
was recognized by the state which moved to disrupt it. Major ideological
struggles about the correct path to transforming SDS into a broader mass
organization polarized rapidly, while simultaneously the urgent necessity to
join the struggle against imperialism in a serious and armed way was
heightened by the Vietnam War and the liberation movement of Black
people. Things were in great turmoil and a continuous process of change.

SELF-CRITICISM

We have to learn from our mistakes. Upsorting errors and correct
understandings, reassessing strengths and weaknesses, are a revolutionary
responsibility. This is because our errors have consequences for the ability to
find the right road, for trust and confidence in relationship with the people,
and also for the state which learns from our errors and will use them against
us, AU movements make mistakes. Those which recover from their mistakes
have been able to act with audacity and move forward with the people. But
errors must first be recognized and corrected; this is a test of our
movement’s strength.

We were correct in our decision to prepare and build the armed
struggle. There is a strategic necessity to build underground movement, to
learn to fight through fighting, to pull forward into the conflict. There is a
need to develop militant action, and from militant action to develop guerrilla
activity. This beginning involved a confrontation with privilege and
inhibition and was inipoUte, rough, disruptive and disorderly. It was an
essential step forward, and could not be held back for some “perfect
moment.” Three of our comrades gave their lives to begin the armed struggle
—Diana Oughton, Teddy Gold, and Terry Robbins. By March 1970, a base
from which to carry out guerrilla and underground actions had been
estabbshed.

We were wrong in failing to realize the possibility and strategic
necessity of involving masses of people in anti-imperialLst action and
organization. We fixed our vision only on white people’s complicity with
empire, with the silence in the face of escalating terror and blatant murder of
Black revolutionaries. We let go of our identification with the people —the
promise, the yearnings, the defeats.

This error had two consequences.

In the course of preparing for armed struggle in late 1969 we began
mistaking friends for enemies. We applied the strictest standards of
•'■.-illingness to risk everything to comrades and allies, as weU as to the real
opportunists who represented the politics of retreat. We attacked those who
could not come along the whole way, sometimes just because they were not
ready to support everything we said and did. We did not learn from
meaningful criticism from comrades.

We made the mistake of deemphasizing the importance of mass
work and lost sight of our long-standing commitment to mass struggle. The
militancy and commitment of the Days of Rage and the initiation of armed
actions contributed to andpushed forward mass struggle:the continuous revolt
in the armed forces, the Justice Department demonstration in November
1969, TDA’s (The Day After demonstrations), Isla Vista, culminating in
Jackson/Kent/Cambodia in the spring of 1970, Conditions were ripe. The
mass movement continued to grow, broaden and escalate at the same time
ihat mass organizations began to fall apart, waver and dissolve.

Reaffirming the importance of mass movement and political as
well as military struggle, we wrote New Morning in December 1970. But
New Morning gave uncritical support to youth culture and came to represent
a repudiation of revolutionary violence. The Panther 21 wrote a generous
and fighting criticism of New Morning from prison, which warned us against
putting down our weapons. They correctly pointed to the necessity to
Continue to fight and our need to teach our people to fight. By failing to
answer, wc lost an opportunity to engage in dialogue with these brave and
dedicated comrades.

TURNING WEAKNESS INTO STRENGTH

Now the movement is disorganized, divided and defensive, unable
to fulfill the whole potential to learn and to lead. There has been relatively-
lit tie organized mas.s action and relatively great disunity within our
movement in the last three years. In the movement times are hard. On the
other hand, the opportunity for change and organizing among millions of
poor, unemployed and working people, among women, among youth, is
great. The continuing social crises are accelerating the process of social
dislocation, and people are opening to the possibility of revolutionary
consciousness.

Objectiv&conditions do not produce revolution themselves. In times
of crisis and change people’s fears and discontents and hopes can be
mobilized in different directions —toward opiates of all sorts, reform,
right-wing movements and war. That is why revolutionary organization,
leadership and example are required to call the discontent into life and
action, to seize the time.

There are serious problems and barriers to revolutionary grow-th
now facing us, which -yv'e have to uncover and look in the face. Some are
setbacks inflicted by the state; some are obstacles —weaknesses and
contradictions among us; some are anti-revolutionary currents and errors
within the movement.

OBSTACLES

Anti -organization tendencies. The lack of a national organization,
embracing and based in popular movements, unified around anti-imperialism
is a most severe weakness* A generation of cadre was built in the struggles of
the 60's and early 70’s. People need organization. Organization unites, gives
direction and breadth to particular political work* The lack of organization
affects all other problems*

It leaves people with no place to go to join the struggle, no way to
connect to something larger than ourselves, no form for struggling and
resolving our other problems* Good local work or work focused around one
single issue suffers from the lack of national, overaO organization*

The failures and the dissolution of previous organizations have
served as an excuse for anti-organizational tendencies: attacking and
undermining all forms of organization. The idea prevails that organization
means giving up individual integrity, or is irretrievably sexist/male

dominated, or is by definition oppressive* Ijike every other revolutionary
movement on earth, we desperately need good organizations, strong and
healthy, to embody the struggle and direct our energies like a spear.

Cynicism* The subjective mood of surrender and powerlessness is
expressed in various repudiations of the 60"s or turning to idealistic utopian
solutions* Cynicism coincides with extreme individualism, expects the
revolution to somehow be pure, and victories easy* We also face adversity;
some activists feel extremely demoralized, some feel burned out from the
difficulties of revolutionary work* We must help each other tlirough pain and
breakdown, through separation, loss and death. We must care for the
physical and mental health of the revolutionary community, for those in
prison, for the raising of the children and the sustenance of the older people*
At the same time as we recognize the real difficulties, we nourish our
revolutionary spirit, commit every fiber of our lives to the struggle*

Sexism* The full participation and leadership of women is necessary
for succesful and healthy revolution* Revolutionary organizations must
recognize the struggle for women's liberation as a fundamental political
revolution and must repudiate the intolerable backwardness of all forms of
sexism. The development of the independent women's movement as well as
active struggle against the institutions and ideas of sexism are the basis for
insuring that the revolution genuinely empowers women.

Racism* The left must make dear at every point its unswerving and
mibtant support for the liberation of Black, Puerto Rican, Chicano, Native
American and all Third World peoples* It must refuse to compromise this
active support for short-term '^gains,^' or to win the approval of whites we
are trying to organize at the workshop, in the schools or the communities.
This is true for the whole movement and for every individual in the
movement. The creation of an anti-racist w^hite movement is the necessary
foundation for the functional unity of Third World and white enemies of the
empire* Anti-racist organizing and action can create this unity* Where this
kind of w^ork has begun, it should be broadened and extended*

ANTI-REVOLUTIONARY ERRORS IN THE MOVEMENT

There are two currents of thought and activity that conspire to hold
back the power of the movement. They are American exceptionalism and
reformism. These tendencies often unite and reinforce each other. They are
subtly embedded in various tendencies and accepted truisms in the left, and
they are strategically put forward by the enemy to deflect us. They are both
racist in effect.

American exceptionalism is the assumption that for one reason or
another —US “technological superiority,” the “post-scarcity economy,” the
“system of democracy,” our “advanced consciousness”— our revolutionary
struggle is not subject to the same general conditions and the same general
necessities as others.

It assumes different faces. One is American superiority, a kind of
cultural chauvinism. This is characterized by the acceptance of some of these
positions: that imperialism is something different from and unnecessary to
capitalism, something that happens outside the US, incidental to the struggle
here; US society is stable and even, not subject to the great dislocations and
wrenching changes sweeping the world; our feminist consciousness is more
advanced that that of women in Third World liberation movements or in
Cuba or Vietnam; our revolution will be a consciousness revolution on the
plane of personal relations and sexuality —we have passed beyond anything
as “old fashioned” as socialism.

Of course there are new conditions and unique aspects to US
society. Our revolution makes its own contributions. But we have to elicit
the class consciousness and struggle out from beneath layers of false
consciousness, resignation and fearfulness. Our women's movement is a great
new tttal movement, but we can also learn much from women of the Third
World about who our enemy is and how' to mobilize to fight him. The
repudiation of cultural oppression isn’t everything, but it does constitute a
serious break with the brain- washing control of empire.

As a people we are saturated with the mj'th of American
superiority. As a revolutionary people, we must take our place in the human
community resolutely opposed to all expressions of arrogance.

Another form of American exceptionalism is rejecting forms of
struggle for the US which are obviously necessary in other parts of the
world. Some people actually defend the taking up of arms by the
Vietnamese people, the Chilean workers or the Chinese Revolution —but
preserve the territory within US borders from the same laws and forces
which produce, revolution everywhere else. This is half-hearted
internationalism. Colossal arrogance is concealed in the self-deception that
Third World people and socialist countries can and must do the fighting
while we have some kind of free ride, tidy and constitutional.

Reformism deceives and derails the movement by putting forward
the strategy of “peaceful transition to socialism.” It pretends to reassure the
people by spreading pacifist and conciliatory ideas. It sells short the
sacrifices and strivings of the people —disarms them of their correct
understanding of the intractable nature of the enemy and disarms them of
their ow'n power and vsdll to fight and win. Reformism assumes the essential
goodness of US society, in conflict with the revolutionary view that the

bj^stem lis rotten tu the core and miist be overtlironn.

Reformism rejects rcvolutiomir) Wolence by Ircatiiig each new
armed act as if it were a Reichstag fire, an ai:t of provocation, or premature.
Along with denouncing armed struggle comes tlie exaggerated emphasis on
legality and electoral struggle, or an attempt to influence power by
collaboration with the “best’’ aspects of the imperialists. Thus many good
struggles which are parallel to and coniplemcntary to militant and armed
struggle are instead turned agaitist it, and posed as an alternative.

Another characteristic of reformism is “niainstreamism” —the
attempt within the left to take on the coloration of the worst aspects of the
mainstream of US society and history so as to be acceptable, and thereby
change things without disturbing people loomuelcThis is an attempt toslidem
under the flag. In the name of becoming integrated with the US people, this
movement abdicates its responsibility to confront racism and class rule and
change it. It becomes corrupt.

SETBACKS INFLICTED RV THE STATE

We are lighting a treacherous and ruthless enemy, Tlie state ha^
implemented a plan to <^ontain and crush tiie puwer of revolution, Tn the last
period they have inflicted some serious blt>ws which have set back the
struggle.

Counterinsurgency . A major organized attack has been mounted
against Black people and the Black community by Nixon forces. Like US
military interventions against Third World peoples, this campaign of
genocide i,s a measure of the powerful tlin;at to empire posed by Black
people. It lias included waves of assassinatioris of Black leaders, imprisoning
large sectors of the young nulitanl populaliom often for life, infiJlraiion and
generalized terror. Heroin and inelliadouf^ traffic have lieen massively
directed against Black urban cc.^mmunities. Part of a generation of Black
youth has been lost to drugs. It was irresponsible of us in 1970 to emphasize
only the social role of consejousness-expanding drugs wilbouf making a
frontal assault on the gcnoeidal use of lieioin the main tlirusf of our position
on drugs*

The government lias come down hard on the entire Black
community; massive unejnploynicnl, sthoob.^ which cultivate illiteracy
among Black children, cuthatdts in fuiul.s for the cities which hasten the
collapse of communities through terrible housing and welfare starvation.

It is impossible to estimate the huEuan cost of the goverEiment’s
strategy —the lives of people hke Jonathan and George Jackson,

Repression, The nature of Nix on N extralegal attack on the
movement was spelled out in the J, Edgar Hoover memo of May 1968 and
elaborated by Mitchell and the J usticc Department at id White House
CIA-typcs* It is a strategy of infiltration, disruption and selccled blows
against anti-war and revolutionary rnovemciUs and leaders. It did temporarily
succeed in creating a climate of distrust and suspicion on the left. Its tactics
included threats and intimidation, espionage, giand juries and long trials
—and selected murders. The strategy against the Black movcmenl and the
strategy against the anti-war left are different faces of the same apparatus.
Their basic repressive strategy is to divide, separate out, and make vulnerable

—to divide Third World and white, il^ose in prLson from those outside, those
in solitary from Ihose in [lopulation, leaders from the grass roots and the
guerrillas from the mass movement.

OrjS^aTuznijj a Rase fo r Fa so ism. In the US this means racism:
building cxplictlv^ or Ihiiily^disguisef] anti-Black and Third World campaigns.
To the extent that thev have gone unehahenged by organized revolutionary
forces they have 'been sci ious defeats.

The aiLli'busitig movement is a Nixon-speciai, a tragedy for children

and anti-racist people. The entire elaborate campaign against busing is

promoted to disguise the fact tliat segregation of schools today is more

intense and cxlcnsive ihjn in 1954 when the Supreme Court ordered it

ended. Anli-busing will roil back integraiion where it has happened and

entrench a segregated school system firmly in the control of racist white

Boards of EducaCoiu The earnpaign is vioienilv anti-Black, under cover of

anti-busing. In Boston 20,000 whites marched against the busing of children;

in Pontiac, Michigan, Ozone Park and Caaarsie, Aew York, white parents

attacked &clu)ol buses md ooured oil on Black childreru

±1

Nixon’s untid>using campaign goes hand in hand with drastic cuts of
funds for education. Education for Third W'orld children in segregated
Schools is coionial-siyle —Black, Chicano, and Puerto Rican youth North and
South are abused, overcrowded, igiiored if quiet and drugged if not, lost in
detention centers and b<^T[cn. Anti-busing has a political meaning which is
not at all about whetiier busing is Lhe best way to achieve decent education
for most children. The real queslion is: Who will control the schools ? The
design of the state is cxmLixd of the child’s education, whether in the
integrated or segregated scliook Segr'cgate where you can; track the kids
where you must integrate. While racist control of tlie schools attempts to
prevent the Black child from succeeding in that dangerous and subversive
endeavor: learning to road.

A similar assault has been mounted against the people on welfare^
women, children and old people. Rockefeller and Reagan have led special
drives to institute photo indentity cards, compulsory work programs, and
impossible requirements to drive people off welfare by every means*

Nixon has twice based his election propaganda on the rallying cry
of law-and-order* This has led to a national reorganization of police forces,
greater police use of advanced counterinsurgency technology developed for
Vietnam, and greater centralization of police forces thru computers, training
and coordinating groups like LEAA*

Anti-crime legislation mobilizes racist fears in the white population.
It has been successful enough to undo many gains of the previous two
decades: to initiate preventive detention, undermine the jury system and put
into effect new mandatory death penalties. Two models are the special
police crackdown unit used in Detroit, called STRESS, which was
responsible for the murder of many Black people; and the new Rockefeller
drug law, which forces legal addiction by giving people a “choice” between
long prison sentences and lifetime parole, or mandatory methadone
maintenance.

If we do not create an anti-racist left, the masses of white people
being bombarded with these measures have little alternative but to resolve
these fears and these conflicts the traditional way —in complicity with
racism.

CONTINUING CRISIS AT HOME

Conditions will not wait for us. With the decline of imperialism the
ability to expand and export basic contradictions becomes less available to
the US rulers and this means continual crisis and hardship for people here.
We are looking at two of these crises to analyze their origins and their
consequences for the imperialists and for the people.

GOVERNMENTAL CRISIS

In the wake of the US defeat in Vietnam comes an unprecendented
governmental crisis, Watergate is a magnificent victory of the struggles of the
60’s, a reflection of the war coming home. Crisis chases crisis as state leaders
search for a consolidating strategy. The turmoil is indicative of serious and
fatal weaknesses in the system. It offers an unparalleled opportunity for
revolutionary and popular movements.

Nixon has been caught with the chicken in his hand. His known
Crimes include sabotage of elections, cover-up of the sabotage, land deals,
income tax evasions, tampering with the evidence, giant swindles and fixes
—not to mention his secret wars abroad and at home, campaigns of
race-hatred, the air war against Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and violation
of the Ceasefire Agreement.

Nixon’s re-election was a low point. But the unanimity of his
election was momentary and hollow; it began crumbling immediately. The
terror bombing of Hanoi was carried out just before the Paris Peace

.\greemeiit uliich ackno\vltMlg("d LS lUhI jiurkcd m jn.iior ut [ur\ ior

[he Viel.iiames<^ people, along tli(' ro^Ml la iiulE'pfni drncr jjirl I i ljn-;iE i um : llif
as&iasHiiiaLioii of Aniilcar (kilii'al, M'riran lihtTalioit lr;n^<'r afid ItrLu! oi' tliE'
PAJCC wa?; carried out t.>)' mercenaries^ oT 1 S-arjiie^l [^Jrl^gai on [lie rve nt'
the declara lion of the i[K]ep<niden( e oJ f in i rie- lh^^an . M \on : lio I h drad I \
powerful and seriously weak<nied. Kiglitt eri motUli- later he [ia> hf cnnie ihe
ivmho] oi de-legitiniized b(Jurgeois ideology* a tw'r>-lHt t rirninaL host to a
den of monopolies and er^nv-ent fhieva^s.

iSi^on lias always l>een a polilieal hauler or eounlf r iaw oliilion and
tighter eoidrol of the colonies —an executioner of the It osenher^s, \hv men
at Attica, the students at J ackson and K(ml. His naliofuil mili ta[ \ ah^rt
during the 1973 October War in the Mideast shows tliE’ I’antastic lengths [o
which he w ill carry the world to the brink of war. His Ohrtstmas bombing at
Hanoi was the tiorrihle proof that hisprdieies are leased {>n terror against the
people. His fundamental program is militarization —that is, enorTnoiis
technoltjgical and rnilitar> spending for war and arms abroad and police
control at home*

Watergate is a dt)mest ic reflection of the empire in crisis, for
\ixon/Kissing(;r* political nnity in the LS around a program oi law -a nd-ordET
for the world was CKSScntial in the wake of sueeessful revolution abroad.
There are historical pre{'ed<mts for imperialist repression follow ing a
revolutionary sueccss:

From the A. Y. Post, Wednesday, June 6. 1 973:

Radicals were the target. The Attorney (leneral and his
agents, armed with 6U,000 dossiers compiled under J. Edgar
Hoover, struck quickly. In 33 cities across the nation,
government men seized more than 4,000 persons, sometimes
wdlhoul the authority of a court warrant, in homes, cafes,
club rooms and taverns.

It was Januai'v 1920, and many Americans feared
for national security in the wake of the successful
G)mmunist revolution in Russia, the spectre of spreading
Bolshevism, scattered bombings in the US and troubling labor
strikes.

Attorney C General A* AEtchell Palmer rode a wave of
popular support with his massive federal arrests of Russian
immigrants, local Communists and other suspected radicals.

Tri order to rriak{^ his foreign policy of military terror and detente
effective, and in order to enisfi rehedlion and anger at home, Aixon created
an extralegal force (the plumbers), a co u tiler iusurgeiuy program and
sabotage operation. justified thesis moves on the basis of ualiEmed security
and domestic subversion corru^rstones of Aixon posva^r tor over 25

years. His moves to reassert EXuUrol spilled ovt:r ag;diist substatitial ehnneuts
of the ruling <;lass and th(^ struggle for bourgeois political ptnvt'r was on.
Nixon's links with the giaiil corporations have been put on tlu^ line, fins is
th(i rule in this stage of inonopolv rapilal: the idEmiitx of business and
gEvvt^rrirnent . Bii ! for now , M\on V I be one, caugftl in ealuuM s, on t lie
defmisive.

asprr! o( IIk^ prosecution of tlic Watergate crisis itself
rcjiKiins in l!ie Innnls of the ruling class. The W^atergalc investigations observe
genlleinanh liniils; tlu^y have never explored Nixon's deliberate aggi^ession
agaiiisl Hlaek. ChiciUit^, and Puerto Rican communities; they cover for every
imadioJi of Cl \ operations at home. Power in the t;S is a white genLleman V
club*

Yet the crisis runs away. It has become the pobti('al expressitm of a
process that began in the 60 's -the defeat of the myth of American fr<'edom
and dennuTaey* Vietnam is the crime that plagues Nixon, defines his fall. He
is a war crimiuah The consequence of Watergate is a population wary of the
hypocritical words of leading politicians, wise to the bankiuptcy of existing
soeifiv.

THE HEAL AND PHONY ENERGY CRISTS

The real energy crisis is the. crisis of imperialism. It is in a fight
o^e^ raw materials arrd resources, H reflects the crisis in empire: der.lining
Western control over the economies of the Third World, increased
compel itioii between capitalist coiu>trieSj and growing stagnal ion arising
from contradictions untiiin monopoly capitalism itself. The system is in
trotdile.

In order to maintain growth and economic dominance, US
corporations and government have foUow^ed policies which would maximize
oil company profits {>verseas; US -based oil companies provided 60 percent of
Europe's oil and 80 percent of Japan's oil, primarily from wells in the
Mideast. That arrangement depended on continued dominalitm by the IS
wdthin the capitalist sphere and over the oil-exporting nations, US
imperialism lost world hegemony in Vietnam. This loss made it impossible
for the US to keep dollars afloat on its own terms, leading to such things as
dollar devaluations and the OPEC embargo. The US oil companies can no
longer dictate the terms under which oil and natural gas will be distributed
and sold tfiroughout the non-socialiat world.

From these conditions, the ruling class devised the phony energy
crisis as a strategy to recapture as much control and domination as possible.
They delii^eratciy limited refining capacity, and created artificial shortages
prior to the embargo. The largest oil companies used the suffering of the
people to rake in windfall profits. Through the inevitable crises of capitalism,
the gjartt monopolies grow stronger and seize greater control of the
economy, political life and the means of destruction. But even as the crisis is
engineered, it gets out of hand and creates ne\v contradictions.

The phony energy crisis was cooked up by the giant monopolies,
the ''masters of the oil world^' who control the reserves. Tn addition to
unprecedented price rises, they got a blank check to exploit and develop
highly profitable energy sources: the Alaska pipeline, shale oil in the
Rockif^s, off-shore drilling rights, strip mining, and dangerous, leaky nuclear
power plants with lethal byproducts. The oil monopolies have emerged as
energy monopolies —with, major interests in coal, natural gas, shale and
nuclear powder. Finally, the big companies have increased their contention
with other capitalist rivals in other countries and their power to eliminate
smaller IS oil companies.

it is the people who are paying for these bonanza profits and are
being forced to bear the brunt of the crisis. Although the shortages were
created in corporate board rooms, the crisis has become grimly real. The
people are directly affected in numerous and serious ways. The longer the
income, the greater the impact of energy costs, food prices, inflation and
unemployment. There's alw^ays been an etiergy crisis for Black people “Uo
heating oil in wdnLer, no transportation to go to work. Children became sick
and died from diseases caused by cold apartnicnts; last winter a 93-ycar-old
couple froze to death for lack of heat; nullions have been laid off jobs and
suffered hardship from lacking the basic necessities of life.

People know that it is a political crisis “not a natural catastrophe,
not a shortage of fuel, not a technical failure. The socialist nations are not in
an energy crisis —this is a capitalist crisis of profit and powder.

At the same time as the US people arc urged to turn dowm their
thermostats, the US 6th and 7lh naval fleets alone consume one third of the
Arab oil used by the LJS, Military consumption of energy is astronomical; the
energy^ consumed in the production of atomic bombs and materials for the
stockpile, in W'ur reserve's of jet fuel, or in the flying time of 0-52 's should be
tlie first to go, Nixon's policy of Vietnamization depends on substituting
energy (fuel for the air war, the technological battlefield and the Saigon
military) for US soldiers. Over 20,000 barrels of oil per day for military use
are supplied to Thicu by the US.

With 6 percent of the world's population, the L S consumes over
one third of the world's energy resourcr\s. The corpe^rate myth of limit less
consumption is based on control of Tfikd W'orld resources. The ruling class
encourages wasteful and reckless dependence on petrochemical products:
high horsc-pow^er and excessively heavy cars, plastics and synthetics and
nitrogen fertilizers. The failure to develop good sources of energy (such as
fusion or solar energy) is not based on priorities for a better life, but on
profit.

There arc many consequences from (he energy crisis:

—The ruling class has tried to use it to lay the basis for war in the
Midcast. It is a measure of the strength of the 60's and of the Third World
riatitms that w^ar-mongering in the Midcast is not an e^sy out for them,

—The oil crisis bodes more of the same for other resources, US
cc^rporations arc self-sufficient in only ten of the 36 basic industrial raw
materials. They arc a parasite on the Third World, They will face continuing
crises over wdto is to controi and who is to profit. Common fronts among the
raw^ material producing countries of the Third World are a great step forward
and a significant challenge to unchecked US domination and plunder. The
power in the unity of the small. The recent U.Nk special session on raw
materials drew a sharp picture of the plunder of the poor countries by
imperialism, and the terms of future struggle. Countries rich in bauxite,
copper, iron ore and other resources are beginning to unite for the
protection of their natural wT.alth, The people of the Third World are striving
to control their ow'n economies and to make full use of their resources. This
is an upset of US plans for a new^ stable order.

—The ecological devastation Avrought by the energy companies is
unparallel ed. In Puerto Rico, Ifidoncsia, Angola and Brazil, multinational
corporations seek new^ sources of energy at the expense of the sane

<|{^\rlopiiiriil oi ! \w iiiUuiMl or tlie wislien of llio people. The

plun^l<'r for sourers oj' power is enu'rgitig as a major threat to (he survival of
rural areas of this roniUrv and lo ihe conlinued culture and commuihty of
pi^opic ^^llo live there, Tlie major oil companies are pushing thru contracts to
strip mine roal on llie Chc)<mne aiid Crtnv rcscr\Jtions in Montana on a
scale I hat would foreitih urbanize and transform the Native American
population and denude the landscape. Only a tiny proportioii of the 1.8
million acres of lajui damag<'d by stripping in the West and Appalachia have
heeji reclaimed to any extent at alb The rape of Ho pi and Navajo lands to
create giant power plants in Four Cor mas, New Mexico, is creating pollution
greater than in Los Angeles. The \KC has pushed thru a nKissive program to
build 500 to 700 new' nuclear power plants in partnership with corporations
like W^estinghonse and R<ickwelb These breeder reactors arc expensive,
dangerous, and deadly to adjoining waters and connnnnilies. They now
ihrcalet^ every major New England river, tiie (ireat Lakes and the oceans
themselve‘.s.

-Industr) passed on its problems by increasing unemployment,
laying off thousands, and drivijig up the prices of everythingAVomen and
Black wajrkers, last hired i\nd first fired, suffer the most immediately.

These disruptions to an already stagnating economy have resulted
irj a serious attack on the basic necessities for masses of people. For the lives
of Third WT^rld people, families headed hy women, and the people who are
dirt poor, it is violent aggression, hiflation is deadly for old people, for
tamili^'s on welfare and for I he great number of umlcremptoyed. But the
Crisis cannot be contained among the dispossesed -it attacks the common
family, the working person.

. —A severe food crisis reflected in the rise of food prices and massive
food shortages is emerging. In the wealthiest country in the world, there is a
cost of living and it is beyond the reach of millions of people. Inflation and
the impact of the energy crisis will he used to drive up this cost to live,
especially food prices. There has always been starvation and malnutrition for
many in the US “the human consequences of food for profit. As food prices
climb and real incojnes decline, broad sectors of the population are beset by
mounting debt, loss of savings, fear for jobs.

Food production, distribution, and agricultural land have become
concentrated in monopolies ((-ailed agribiisim^ss) since World War II, noth
reliance on fertilizers, pestichies, new methods of drying and storage and
mechanization that consume cnormoits amounts of energy. Agribusiness
rests on the super-exploitation of farm workers and share-croppers on the
one hand, and giant programs of government subsidies (welfare for the rich)
to keep vast stretches of ferlile land deliberately unproductive. This is to
keep prices up in the US. It amounts to government-enforced shortage,
malnutrition for millions of people in flie US, hunger and starvation for the
world’s people.

Of all the consequences of the US use of w orld resources for profit,
the most serious is beginning to come to the fore: a major crisis in the w^orld
food supply. W'hat is experienced here as sliortages and high prices is
translated in the Third W'orld as real famine and paralysis of industrial
development. The US with its mechanized iigribusincss lias a monopoly on
food cxportijig, and it controls a vast sector of the food-pioduring land in
the world. A rise in food prices devastates 'bhird World countries. They must

deptjnd on tht^ l-S fur food. Agrkujllural Uind tliroughoui tfic Tldrd World 1.^
turned info a plan la t ion system of ''cash crops’’ hv iinperiaiism (luhacco,
rubber^ coffee, coUon), Two thirds of all the arable land in Latin America is
planted with iion-rmtritious cash crops — weallfL ft.^r th(’ colon i/^ers, not
for the people. So nth Vietnam, once the rice bowl of Southeast Asia, is now-
forced to import '"miracle” rice from the US. Iinperialisni’s irrational use of
agricultural resources to products vast quantities of meal Lo feed some of the
US population means that the amount of protein wasted liy US agriculture is
comparable to the protein deficiency of the rcsl td the wurhL

Starvation, hunger and food shortages will unleash and sharpen ail
the hasi(‘ t^onlradiclions. The imperialists \vijl respond with s<duLions like
population control, war, and greater monopfdy power. Hut hunger is too
stark and the conflict in econcilahle. This conlradictiou <'ouid well define the
coming period.

Without mass struggle there can be no revolution.
Without armed struggle there eaii be no victory.

Denunciations of the struggles of the sixties as a failure do
the enemy’s w^ork. These surrenders are a live burial of our
people’s great moments, and weaken the future by poisoning
the lessons of the past.

As a people we arc saturated with the myth of American
supenoiity. As a revoluEionai'y people, w^e must take our
place in the human community resolutely opposed to all
expressions (jf arrogance.

StarvaliuiK hunger and food shortages will unleash and
sharpen all the basic contradictions.

To sav that US imperialism is on the ficfetishe docs not mean
it is toolhh'ss nor that its overthrow will come fast or simply.
In its decline imperialism is extremely cruel and it will use
every weapon it has to deceive, divide, starve, torture and
niurdei tliosc who attack it. But Its evcnliud overlhrow is
inevitable.

WHAT WE THIAK

'['h r: vvorli^ of forces bclueen rcvoluToii aod

{'.oonUM -revolution cliaiij^cd in favor ot revolnUori,

Truong Ouiih
January ]T^72

Our Jiu liiod i:^ diak'clical luatt-rialisni. frr plan v>ur . \\t

make atfc amilysis of [.lu^ couHicting force-, l.lir undci'lyiug ron tradic[ i[jue oi'
uur limcmuiu Sjlo\ duo lH'u (kivcJrjp'mg.

Tf’i'i jui.pcr IS opi im is! ie. Tfial. is iHU.'.ausc \vc ai'c rtuiscious the! Hie
must aiigTissiM: and friaalatoi.y vmperia i isiTi tfrU v.w.v cxisied jja.- bucu
l^^ tiic \ir'inaMicsc pca^pltk This unique atid ajua/Iug praaoti of'
[i[slur\ is tile era uf j. S imperuU crisis and dccliruv dk-aJaN' owe' a Idliiuu
[Hv^fde u['gaui/e their livt^s aroUfU^ socialisuK tor[ay [liour^amls nf gnciiuiku-
and nulJcm^ ui' [jeujde in over sixtv coujrti'ies are. tmgaged in acli^'r s[riiggi(^
aga iu-l [ '> imperialism, I ndepimdencc movements, wars ni' mif iomd
iiheriUinii. ami ive ; dij [ joiiary insnerrHSUts willuti th(^ me eiig-gsul in die
fleej-i\e ^'L eakr-rihip oi' ihe t mriire. It is now lieing taumed liae.k \)\ (he pesnde
i I [)as i'uid ler] a uH idu mieia ak

LS imf>f [Tdisri! iia,- had its sethaeLs. stalemates ami delVam Isefure,
hni ne\er uJU' -o deei-T'e a- iii Vietnam, Tfie Vietnan)(^se mei and turnfu]
liaelv ilie ['ufi feree ot i S t c e fuK'd ogical a]id military might. am[ emlrri Hu' era
ol' \waTI heaeitnuis i'or the t.S. Vit'liiajn is a watershed in the rleeiiue of
impeiTdi-m — h is ihe defining even! of our tinuu

I mirer.ia i e^m has dug its eiaws det'pest inti.> the o;>[U'e>.sed and
euliun/aa'I rj;U ,iFid it is these nations vvlu.) are now the org,-nii/aak leading
speai'uoiiil in iiie eiimmon struggle agaim-l. imperialism. The impnsitiurj of
tureign rule and t<n'eign exufedtalioM tias created tlu' eonditioiis wldiji ga^e
hjr! iJ i. e^ mo\-emeni,'- for na t inna I hhera tion — tfie seeds of i taper iat ism: V
de:-. 1 (■ iH i I u n . Tli e sc met vc merits have growri and niultiidie.nd Oreal

^^ohUion:^rv leaders fiave emeigerl from ihc Third World, forged in pr^ofile's
Will’ and in the ljuihling of soi iaiisni, ISeeiuisc tlie US is so deptnidr'nt on its
eolonies ([he super-exploitation of the 'Third W orld), national liheration both
here and abroad is a knifi^ to the strategic underbelly of the monster.

To say tha[ IS imperialism is on the deferisiva* does not mean it is
toothh^ss nor tiiat its ovfTtlirow will (iome last or simply. In its decline
imperialism is <^xtr<^mely cruel arid it will use every weapon it has to deeeive,
divith^, starve, torture and murder those who attack it. Hut its eventual
r^verthrow is inevital^le.

As eol(Hii/ed nations liberate themselves, imperialism's ability to
maintain a stable economy and ideological hegemony over its own people
crumbles. The decline of imperialism produces continuing crises inside the
[JS: Watergate, energy crisis, unemployment. The traditional outlets for
dornesti<' crisis and eonfliet - the export of contradictions, racism, war-
havt^ bet^ome less workable. It is certain that another crisis v\dJl follow the
last, that unpredictable crises will color the future. Each separate crisis is
tem})orary and able to be rationali/.ed in the short run; but the overall crisis
and decline of imperialism is permanent and ongoing.

The cris('s related to imperial decline ensile threat possibilities for a
leap in revolutic^mry conseiousness.

Throughout its history, tin' rulers of the US have maintained their
power by ta’cating privileged sectors among the people aud hdtiiig us fight
ovcT the privlleg(xs, Jn this, their main weapon is white supremacy, i\ow great
fissures have appeared. The wealtli of the world is no longer (completely aj
the disposal of llit' US, Imperialism is faced with the neu:essity to militarize
and inereasf' its control over US society, espeeiallv tlie dissident and
rebellious sectors.

I’he einpii'e feeds on war. War is necessary i or expansion and
colonial control, but uiisueccssful and unjust war loosens the imperialisUs
hold over the home base. As peoples reclaim their lands and their rt^sonrees,
imperialism is forta^J to e\trac;t more wealtli from (waTvwhere it can - where
it still can reach in ihe Third World, from its capital is I allies and competitors,
and from tlie IjS people.

This is the iruTeasing linmd of the TOT: tlie trend of crisis and
depression. Our job is to tap the discontent seething in many sectors of the
population, to find allies everywhere pe<jple are hungv) or angry, to mobilize
poor and working people against imperialism. In this proc'ess the pi^ople will
continue to generate new eadlure ajid new forms for the struggle to fit our
particEjIar irouditious and time. There are beautiful developmenis, like tlie
rising of women against the oppression of male supi einaey, and the struggle
of young pea) pie against ali(mati<jii and opprt'ssion, whieli ai'c full of
revolutionaiw' possihilities. We are not alone. Tin: struggles for national
lilKaatlon are the lifeblood of our own; their hatth's are the frojit line against
our common enemy.

We have an urgent respoiisihilitvr to destroy imperialism from
^^ithin in order to help free tlm world and ourselves from itsgiasp, W ithout
undcjcstimating the diffieidties, this is our position of strength. We use all
the weapons a\ailal>le to us* This necessarily includes mass inilllant action
and guerrilla action to lay the foundation for tlie decisive armed struggle.

This paper is a strategy for revolutionary anti-imperialism.
Anti -imperialism defines our struggle and direction, helps us correctly

identif) our enemy and our friends, and is the necessary basis for advancing
our movefile lit. The strategic weak point of empire today is its hold of its
exteriial and internal colonies, and it is there that imperialism receives the
heaviest hloM s.

Our final goal is the destruction of imperialism, the seizure of
power, and the creation of socialistiK Our strategy for this stage of the
struggle is to organize the oppressed people of the imperial nation itself to
join wilh the colonies ui the attack on imperialism. This process of attacking
and weakening imperialism involves the defeat of all kinds of national
chauvinism and arrogance; this is a precondition to our fight for socialism.

The Vietnamese struggle provides a strategic model: as the
anti-colonial liberation movement advanced, contradictions within the LIS
heightened, creating more favorable conditions for revolutionary organizing
and action —we organized our people and our movement advanced; as
anti-imperialist movement gathered strength and moved forwarti, this aided
the Vietnamese who dealt a decisive blow to US imperialism.

Revolution is a dialectical process of destruction and creation. In
the US, revolution is intimately bound to the process of defeating
imperiaMsrn around the world. Any conception of socialism defined in
national ttirms, within so extreme and predatory an oppressor nation as the
US, is a view that leads in practice to a fight for particular pri\4lege<l interest
and is a very dangerous ideology. Active combat against empire is the only
foundation for socialist revolution in the oppressor nation.

Socialism is the total opposite of capitalism /imperialism. It ih the
rejection of cjhpirc and white supremai'y. Socialism is the violent overthrow
of the bnurge(dsie, I lie establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat,
and the eradicalion of the social system based on profit. Socialism me^ns
control of the productive forces for ihe good of the whole community
instead nf iUv few who live on hilltops and in mansions. Socialism means
priorities }^ased on human need instead of corporate greed. Socialism creates
the comlitiuns for a decent and creative quality of life for all.

After a long struggle, power will he in the hands of [Uv people.
Society will Iiave to he reorganized, toward the integration of each with the
whole, where people can realize them s(' Ives in peace and iVeedojn. Thert' will
be rebuilding to do, hut the tremendous powder of creative liuinan energy
—revealed now iji flashes of liberatecl space and in struggh^— will Ix^ fft^d lo
fulfill its potential. Freed from the^ constrictions, prejudii'cs and fearful
anxieties of imperialist society, pi^ople can be better. Our values are
collective and communal* Birth and death wdJl be celebrated wilh tiignity:
old people will have respect, children w^ill have rights, Wilh the elimination
of waste from our society, all the people can eat healthy food, Tlic cities can
be real human gardens. We will have to rebuild them, reclaim I lie rivers and
forests, and the dying species* Wielded in the inttMcst of every one,
technology can serve us; no labor need be ujiproduclive* Our art, irtusir,
poetry, llu'ater will interpret and awakf‘.n lhor<jlalionship of uirrs('bes iu t!ie
w^orld forces, acting on each olher* Our (aiiture will be insurgejit, eelehralc
people's victories and record the history of the struggle. We will support
those who arc still fighting and continue fighthig oursclvTs, We will awaken
our sense of being part of a wv>rld commmiify, ARM THE SPIRIT

VIETNAM

The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois
civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its
home, where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies,
where it goes naked.

Karl IVfarx

August 8, 1853

New York Daily Tribune

Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom.

Ho Chi Mnh

Many friends see only the difficulties that lie ahead and do
not see the great victory we have won* The Ihris Agreement
not only speaks to the failure of aggression of the United
States in Vietnam, it marks the failure of the global strategy
of the United States to stop liberation struggles of people in
many places*

Nguyen Thi Binh
January 29, 1973

MEANING OF THE CEASEFIRE

It is now more than a year since the signing of the Agreement on
Ending War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam. For the people in the North
and in the liberated areas under the Provisional Revolutionary Government
of South Vietnam, the great effort of reconstruction —to “heal the wounds
of war”-- has begun. However, since the time of the Agreement, more than
73,000 South Vietnamese people have died in combat. 200,000 remain in
Thieu’s prisons. There are no illusions that final peace has come. The people
in the liberated zones defend themselves daily against bombings and attacks,
carried out by Thieu’s US-trained and equipped army.

In the liberated areas of the South, new administrations are being
set up to build schools and clinics, to comb the soil for unexploded
anti-personnel weapons, readying it for replanting. Near Dong Ha in Quang
Tri ftovince, the people have already harvested their first crop of rice in over
five years.

Slowly, the millions of craters are being filled, though it will take
many generations to move enough soil to fill them all. The towns are being
rebuilt, since each town of any size was bombed into dust whenever it was
liberated, “One puts up wth what is available” they say, and out of the
rubble and ruins come adequate structures. In the liberated territories people
are poor, but medical care is free to everyone, people are learning to read
and no one starves. The new life represents the independence and democracy
for which the people of South Vietnam have fought so hard.

Nixon and Thieu have both failed to observe the terms of the
Agreement they signed. US military advisors, disguised as civilians, continue
to advise and organize Thieu’s police and army. The US has violated the
A^eement by sending in new weapons, like F5-E jets. The Nixon
administration is asking Congress to approve $2.4 billion in military and
economic aid to South Vietnam. This is an increase of about 65% over what
was approved for this year. When the money for Cambodia and Laos is
included, the total Nixon request is $3,5 billion. The administration justifies
this increase because of inflation, and now Kissinger is arguing that the US is
“obligated” by the Cease-Fire Agreement to give aid to Thieu.

South Vietnam is a police state, 90% funded by US tax dollars. This
aid makes possible the continued rule of the dictator Thieu. The attacks he
has ordered launched against the liberated zones are major obstacles to peace
and make possible the re-escalatioh of the war at any time.

There is still necessary Vietnam work to be done by the US
anti -imperialist movement. A strong movement is the greatest support we
could give. It would put pressure on Nixon and the government, and it
would continue to build our own struggle here. As time passes, and
reconstruction proceeds, the strength of the liberated areas will grow and the
power of Thieu will be weakened. W'e can help. We must demand that the
Nixon government abide by the Agreement and stop aid to Thieu; and we
must remain vigilant against the possibility of US re-escalation.

The Vietnamese struggle is the most significant political event of
our generation. Understanding the history of the Vietnam war is a key to

understand the present world situation, the present US govern mo nta! oris is,
the present possibilities for the revolutionary movement lierc, and a correct
anti-imperialist perspective. This is the era of national liberation, and for
most of the past fifteen years, Vietnam has been the leading force in this
strug^e.

The Vietnam War, alongside the struggle of Black people, sparked
the youth revolt of the 60’s and created the conditions for the New Left to
mature. The relentless barbarity and length of the US aggression became a
crucible within which our generation learned about US society. We were
forced to see the horror of empire and the real nature of the monster w<' live
in: we “discovered” imperialism.

Many conflicting forces were at work within the youth movement;
progressive characteristics were in conflict with reactionary aspect s, and class
struggle took place within the culture. The growing independe.nc;e of young
people w'as a multi-billion dollar market to be exploited with wuste
commodities. But during the years of resistance —from the Pentagon and
Stop the Draft Week, to Kent State and massive protests against the
Cambodia invasion —the strength of the growing anti-imperialist forces and
consciousness were the “best self” of the youth revolt. We did, at long last,
get into the fight against the dirtiest of all wars. Slowly, in hesilalion and
confusion, we responded to the heroism, humanity and rcvolutioiuiry
principle of an Asian people, led by a saintly and very tough revolutioriary,
Ho Chi Minh.

The draft was an immediate force that pushed us to become an
anti-imperialist movement. It was an attack on poor, Black and Third World
and working-class youth. Seven million young men served in the armed
forces during the Vietnam W'ar. Few families were, spared some direct
confrontation with the war machine. At the same time, millions of us took
to the streets to protest the 1970 invasion of Cambodia. The seriousness of
our threat was growing. The killings of students at Jackson State and Kent
State had a significant effect on the youth movement. The war was brought
honie and Nixon was determined to have law-and-order until the US could
pull off its “peace with honor” charade and get US troops out of South
Vietnam.

W'hat was happening here was only part of a larger proce.ss taking
place around the w'orld. It took the Vietnamese many years to force the US
troop withdrawal. It was four years between the Tet Offensive —which broke
the back of the invading army, forced Johnson to step dowm and the US to
negotiate —and the 1972 Final Offensive. During that time, the anti-war
movement reached its greatest strength and the largest and most militant
demonstrations took place. Inspired by the Black Panthers and other Black
fighters, many whites such as Sam Melville, Cameron Bishop, the New Year’s
Gang in Madison, and ourselves began building armed struggle. Our
movement was undergoing profound changes as the Vietnamese people were
leading the struggle against US imperialism.

INTERNATIONAL VICTORY

The Vietnamese built international solidarity^ around their struggle.
They organized a broad united front against imperialism throughout the
world. This international front —of which the movement in the United
States is an important part— consisted of many Third W'orld nations, the
socialist countries and opposition movements mthin the imperialist
countries. Mass anti-war movements grew, not only in the US, but in Japan.
France, Great Britain, West Germany, Italy and Sw'eden.

In an era of intense contradictions among the socialist countries,
Vietnam fought for a strategic focus on US imperialism as the major enemy
of the world’s people —and united all socialist countries in support of its
struggle.

The success of the Vietnamese struggle helped calJ into being the
urnly of the non-aligned nations. Historic conferences in Guyana (1 972) and
Algeria (1973)^ recognized the PRG and the Cambodian government in exile
of Norodom Shianouk, and sparked the growth of the progressive alliance
that is becoming an increasingly important force in the world.

By tying down the US mibtary forces throughout the 60’s, the
Vietnamese opened up the space for other Third World nations to resist
imperialism. With the bulk of US armed forces in Vietnam^ including 70
percent of the air force at the height of the air war, the US was not in a
position to send the Marines to Chile nor to intervene for Portugal in
Guinc-Bissau, Cuba was able to survive, and in turn help Vietnam, This was
Che's understanding of “Two, Three, Many Vielnams:” a strategy to
overextend and defeat US imperialism.

The Vietnamese say: *‘If the resistance is strong, even a Hawk
may be forced to withdraw. If the resistance is weak, even a
Dove may be tempted to invade/’

By forciTtg the US to use its entire array of weapons, Vietnam
stripped all pretense from US neocolonialism Anti-US demonstrations took
place in the Phillipines, Mexico, Lebanon, Iran and Argentina, This showed
an inherent instability in the US empire* Neocolonial governments faced
pressure from their own people to oppose^the Vietnam War or face rebellion
at home*

The US attempt to win the war exacerbated the US balance of
payments and produced a monetary crisis. Skyrocketing inflation and
unemployment at the same time —supposedly an impossibility under
“modern capitalism’’— cut into the living standards of Third World people,
working people, and the poor throughout the US*

The deteriorating economic situation of the US has meant that its
domination over rival advanced capitalist countries is under greater attack
and is no longer as secure. The growing strength of Japan and the EEC pose
new conflicts for US imperialism.

There is no doubt that the present political isolation of US
imperialism —evidenced in the recent UN decision to declare Puerto Rico a
colony, the Arab and African stand against US-backed Israelbzionism, the
world condemnation of the US and NATO support for PortugaTs African
wars, the admission of the People’s Republic of China to the UN, recognition
of Cuba by a number of Latin American countries— can^be traced to US
defeat in Vietnam*

NATIONAL VICTORY

The victory won by the Vietnamese against US imperialism is
plainly reflected in the Cease-Fire Agreement:

The United States and all other countries respect the
independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of
Vietnam as recognized by the 1954 Geneva Agreements on
Vietnam.

and

The United States will not continue its military involvement
or intervene in the internal affairs of South Vietnam,

The Agreement further states that the United States will dismantle
its military bases in South Vietnam, will withdraw all military forces
including advisers, and will not introduce new military personnel,
armaments, munitions and war material into South Vietnam,

This is a statement of the goals of the National Liberation Front
since its founding in I960 —goals that the US government was forced to
accept and sign after thirteen years of aggression.

Th^ period of total war and attempted genocide has been defeated,
and the US now has been forced into a public recognition of the NLF
program. The Vietnamese victory came at a phenomenal cost to the
Vietnamese people and their homeland: their suffering was incalculable* Yet
their victory is of enormous consequence* The Vietnamese people, through
massive mobilization and the successful carrying out of a people’s v^ar of
iiberalioiK drove out the US invading force, and thereby checked the
advance of US imperialism*

The Vietnam War shows that an organized, united Third World
naliort can hold off and eventually defeat the full force of US imperialism.
This is a major blow to the US attempt to convince, peoples, including those
within its own boundaries, that it is ’‘invincible/’

The Vietnamese strategy was based on the mobilization of their
own people* They raised people’s war to a new level of heroism and
humanity, applying the strategy to Vietnamese conditions. The Vietnamese
say: “If the resistance is strong, even a Hawk may be forced to withdraw. If
the re^islance is weak, even a Dove may be tempted to invade,” The
Vietnamese liberation forces were able to defeat each successive US strategy.
The Tet Offensive of 1968 showed that 500,000 US troops would not be
enough to maintain the US in Vietnam,

iNixon created the policy of “Vietnamization” —changing the color
of the corpses. It Avas a failure militarily, defeated in the invasions of
Cambodia and Laos, and in the 1972 Final Offensive* It was these defeats,
capped by the failure of Nixon’s late December bombings of Hanoi and
Haiphong, which forced him to withdraw US forces just as the French were
obliged to withdraw after their defeat at Dien Bien Phu, The Vietnamese
refer to the destruction of i/5 of the entire US B'52 fleet over Hanoi and
Haiphong during the bombings as the Dien Bien Phu of the skies.

Chapter 1 * Article 1* of trie Cease-Fire Agreement states simply and
clearly tliat the U-S accepts the definition of Vietnam “recognized by the
1954 Geneva Agreements on Vietnam,” This says that Vietnam is one
country, temporarily divided*

The full measure of US defeat can be judged when one considers
that in 1954 the US 1) refused to accept the Geneva Agreements; 2)
immediately set out to subvert them by installing a neocolonial puppet
regime in Saigon; and 3) fought the longest war in US history to maintain
two Vietnams,

“ALL FOR VIETNAM”

The vanguard nature of Vietnamese liberation in the past decade
means that we can approach the difficuH question of class analysis,
consciousness and potential, by looking at how various groups within society
wf^re affected by anti-war struggle* This way we avoid an idealist or
opportunist class analysis, and begin with our understanding, based on
practice* of the leading antidmperiahst forces in society* Black and Third
World people, and young people —especially students and members of the
armed forces— responded to the Vietnam War in the most consistently
principled way. These are the forces within society who kept open the

pus^^ibiliiy of joint action between the oppressed in our couiilr\ and those in
the Third World. Because of its anti-imperialist perspective, [he New Left
became a cutting edge for the expression of working-class consciousness and
commitment. Support for the leading force in the fight against the common
enemy is the essential and necessary content of proletarian internationalism
here and now.

Many organizations pay lip-servdce to the anti-imperialist struggle.
But those movement organizations, who, in practice, did not come to give
full support to the Vietnamese struggle as the main priority of class struggle
made a serious error. This was especially true during the 1972 Final
Offensive, when —between the launching of the offensive on March 31,
1972, and the signing of the Cease-Fire Agreement on January 27, J973
—the slogan of the movement should have been: ‘‘All for Vietnamr’ By this
measure we criticize our own practice during the Final Offensive, when wc
organized under this slogan, but were not successful in caiTving out our full
program, especially at the time of the Christmas bombings of Hanoi and
Haiphong,

This does not mean that organizing among women, students or
workers should have been deferred so that we all could work on
mobilizations. It does mean that the period of the Final Offensive was a
unique time in history, when a specific struggle of momentous consequence
to the overall weakening of imperialism was in a decisive stage that required
full and uncompromising support.lt will be a great leap if wc can learn to
identify those crucial times when a particulai* anti-imperialist focus becomes
the central strategic task of our movement.

Today, many of the same errors continue to play themselves out in
various movement responses to the continuing imperialist aggression in SE
Asia.

A major error is to be blind to Vietnam’s victory. This mistake does
not distinguish between victory and Final Victory. There are many rictories
still to be won in Vietnam: the defeat of the puppet regime in the South,
reunification of the North and South, the consolidation of socialism
throughout all of Vietnam. But victory in revolution is not like the seventh
game of the world series. Victory is built for over time, thru a series of
successes and failures.

When a variety of quantitative changes achieve a point of
qualitative change, this can be considered a victory. The defeat of US ground
troops provides an example: for tliree years the Vietnamese fought the full
force of the US armed forces on the ground. In that time there were many
defeats and losses as well as many victories. By Tet, 1968, the successes had
become the direction of the war. The Tet offensive was extremely costly to
the Vietnamese liberation fighters; it was also the decisive point in the
victory over US ground forces. It was the point at which Vietnamese victory
became inevitable, and the remaining question became: ‘‘At what cost?”
Tlie Vietnamese demand for this stage of the struggle was for US ground
troops to leave their soil, to allow the Vietnamese themselves to resolve the
conflict. This has been partially achieved and is the essence of the victory of
the Cease-Fire Agreement.

Another major error is to say that ihc anti-war movement was
powerless and failed to affect the outcome of the war. These are words we
hear from Nixon. They are destructive lies. DoiTt do the Stale's work.

With an enemy as powerful as US imperialism, every people's
victory is to be treasured and claimed. To deny tlie major accomplishments
of our movement leaves the people weak and demoralized. In our statement
“Common Victories'" on the occasion of the signing of the Cease-Fire
Agreement we saidr

We urge all opponents of the government’s war policies to
allow themselves to seize and celebrate ttiis triumph. We
welcome the renewal which comes from sharing the
aspirations of a heroic people. Distrust of the Nixon rulers
must not blind us to the bght of Vietnam. Without savoring
our common victories, we become cynkai and paralized.
Expecting everything, we discard anylhiitg kss. Now^ the
Vietnamese can order their unification, plant and harvest,
heal and teach, in their own time.

The movement played a specific and Important role. Witliout it, the
Johnson-Nixon governments would most likely have:

—launched a land invasion of North Vietnam
—waged tactical or full nuclear war
-started a war with China
—bombed the dikes of North Vietnam

These were all genocidal weapons in Vac ruling-class arsenal.
Without a growing anti-war movement, without drastic escalation in the
nature and militancy of our resistance, they migld liavc been used. The
political cost at home for each successive siralegy became an important
point in deterring the use of these weapot^s.

A point of great resistance to the war v/as tlie May, 1070 youth
rebellions in response to the US invasion of Cambodia, The uprising forced
Nixon into an early withdrawal from Cambodia and resulted in legislation
prohibiting direct US intervention in Cambodia, Per imps most importantly,
Nixon did not dare use massive US troops in the subsequent invasion of
Laos, This restriction aided the stunning victory of tlie Fathet Lao —a
decisive defeat for Nixon’s strategy^ of extending the war throughout
Indochina.

The anti-war movement can count other significant successes in a
decade of resistance. Never in the entire history of the liS did ihc rulers have
a harder time controlling the minds that pulled the triggers than in Vietnam.
Active duty enlisted people developed fngh consciousn(\ss about the nature
of imperialism. Military insubordination, desertion, sabotage, and fragging
weakened the imperial army and made it unrchaidc. As a result, US ground
forces can no longer be counted upon as a dependable weapon of
counterinsurgency. It is very difficult to imagiirc seirding an army that has so
many Blacks and Third World soldiers to put down, wars of liberation in
Africa or to side with Israeli zionisrn in the Mideast.

Military conH{iription has been abolished, I'he volunteer army is a
somew^hat futile attempt to rebuild a strong military by eliminating the

Toi tlrji ^Inst' WaJfe'nftjTt'ini)

cjjerrtllq to execute,

unwilling draf'teo,

A third major error is to say that: the struggle of an underdeveloped
eounlry like Vietnam is so fimdamenfally differetit from our own that there
are no lessons to be learned. The Vic^tnarnesc people have taught us a lot if
we are able to open ourselves and learn:

—They have shown in praetiee how to build a revolutionary culture
based on internationalism and tvital eommitment to the struggle. In the days
immediately following the coup in Cliile, ihe police occupied a large factory.
About 20 ^corkers died in combat and a young Vietnamese who had been
there since Jiuie ! 97b, learning f he tecimologv of food productiort, climbed
on tile rt>of, filled his pockets with dynamite sticks and jumped on top of a
police bus as it was coming into the courtyard. He was killed along with 40
policemen. The Vietnamese have shown \}\ practice how to respond to
setd)acks and defeat by mobilizing and conliJHiing to Imihl forward motion.
Victory lies m collective unity, courage and sacrifice.

The leading role of wu^men in the \ ietnarncse stritggle has been a
lesson aiid an mKspiration to oppressed people eveiywher<^ The high number
of women in Thieu’s jails — ov(ir 1 00,001)— indicates the role women play in
the liberation movement. Tens of thousands have been active in the guerrilla
army. The Women’s I'ruon of South Vietnam has been a leading organization
of the liberation struggle* Elderly women composed the Army of Mothers of
Fighters, bringing fot>d and medicine to the soldiers on the battlefield. The
desertion rate of the Saigon army, which soared to 20,000 per month during
the 1972 Final Offensive, was partly the work of the political army of
women known as the Longdlaired Army,

In 1970, while working in the rice fields, a mother and

■ : ! .i;: ; i : ; l.i: ■ i ':ii ■ ^ 1 V; "iir ; i V I'i .ir if TTTTiTliiU;eiii(Sflaill»ii

daughter-in-law were raped and killed by US soldiers. This drove a group of
Saigon women, including Mrs. Ngo Ba Thanh, a lawyer with a Ph.D. from
Columbia University, to organize the Committee to Defend the' Right to Live
and the Dignity of Vietnamese Women* Their demands were that the dignity
of women be respected, that the right of women to struggle be recognized,
that US troops be withdrawn, and that a coalition government in South
Vietnam be formed.

Two Vietnamese women leaders are especially known and loved
around the world* Madame Nguyen Thi Binh is the Foreign Minister of the
PRG of SVN. Now 47, she has participated continuously in the struggle since
she was eighteen years old* At 24 she was imprisoned and tortured by the
South Vietnamese police under French direction* Today she is working in
her office in Quang Tri Province.

Madame Nguyen Thi Dinh, from a poor peasant family, is now the
Deputy Commander -in-Chief of the army of the PRG of SVN. She was
seventeen when she joined the resistance. In 1945 she led the first armed
uprising against the French, and in 1960 she led the first armed uprising
against the US supported dictatorship of Ngo Dinh Diem*

“Prior to the Vietnamese victory the US seemed invincible. In our
lifetime we had not been aware of any US defeat* Of course the US didn’t
win in Korea, but this information was skillfully hidden from us. This
knowledge affects our ability to conceive of revolution in our country,

—The Vietnamese organized around the idea that there is a
difference between the people of the US and the government of the US* By
so doing they helped make it real, A major reason for the success of the
anti-war movement here was the friendship extended by the Vietnamese
people to the US people.

“The significance of the Cease-Fire Agreement is that the strength
of people —in Vietnam, around the world, in the US itself- was pitted against
a handful of men who control technological power and the means of
violence* A small poor country can defeat the largest richest power in the
world, provided its people are united and its cause is just*

What an ominous message for the US empire. What an inspiration
and comfort for all people.

SUPPORT THE VIETNAMESE STRUGGLE

People are protest-weary and now some have been put to sleep. They
believe the media, not only that the war is over, but that the conflict has
receded into the background. Our movement is very much undermined by
accepting these lies. Not only does it alienate us from our history and so
prevent a maturing of movement, but it is also a betrayal of the Vietnamese,
We cannot make the mistake of waiting until the war heats up again
to respond to imperialist plans. Our inaction increases the chances of US
military reintervention. Thieu would fall if the US cut off all aid*

Support for the Vietnamese revolution can be incorporated into
individual practice as weO as the program of anti-imperialist organizations.
Whatever work we do, in day care centers, in factories, on the streets or in
jails, education about Vietnam, support for the demands of the Vietnamese

people, and resistance to Nixon’s aggression are priorities for revolutionaries
organizing at this time. Vietnam should play a role in our ever day work.

It is true that Vietnam work cannot be sustained if it is isolated
from the building of the left. However, a left which does not relate to
Vietnam is not a healthy left.

FOUR MAIN ISSUES
ATTACKS OK LIBERATED ZONES

Thieu and his administration have been saying that they expect a
mOitary offensive by the North, but it is Thieu ’s forces that are guilty of
attacking and attempting to. reconquer liberated territory. South Vietnamese
pilots have dropped US -made bombs from US -made planes all over the
liberated zones. Thieu is using the pretext of an offensive to cover his own
violations of the Agreement and as an excuse to get more advanced weapons
and more money from the US, in violation of the Agreement. His friend
Nixon may not last as the US president and Thieu knows he has little
support left.

NO AID TO THIEU

In the Agreement, the US recognized the reality of two separate
zones of administration, two governments and two armies in the South.
Nixon has since denied this in his statements. In the Agreement, the US
pledged not to impose an administration or political personality, to respect
the South Vietnamese people’s right to self-determination. But US aid and
weapons maintain the Thieu administration. We must warn the people of the
risk of war.

HEALING THE WOUNDS OF WAR

The US has failed to honor Article 21 of the Agreement which calls
for the US to “contribute to healing the wounds of war and to post war
reconstruction of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North) and
throughout Indochina.’’

POLITICAL PRISONERS

The Agreement calls for the release of all political prisoners held in
Thieu ’s prisons. But over two hundred thousand people remain imprisoned
by Thieu for political beliefs and actions.

At the time of the signing of the Agreement, Thieu reclassified
thousands of political prisoners as “common criminals” as a tactic to avoid
their release. Many of these people are leaders of the anti-Thieu,
non -communist, neutralist group —the third force in South Vietnamese

politics. According to the terms of the Agreement, they are supposed to help
form the new tripartite Government of National Reconciliation and
Concord. Their release is essential to the successful implementation of the
Agreemen L

The South Vietnamese prisons and tiger {^ages are buill by the US
construction combine IIMK-BRJ (Raymond. Morrison, Knud son i [irown,
Root and Jones). Smith and Wesson manufactures the handcuffs used m the
Saigon jails. Prison officials are trained and their funds are supplied hy only
one sourt^e: the US government.

JtJSTICE ;r0 WAR CRIMINAI.S: AMNESTY FOR RESISTERS

The criminals of this period are the aggressors, the imperialists, the
war-makers. Some are corporate leaders who built the sophisticated tools of
death; some are government bureaucrats wdio wTote the contingency plans
lor bombing the dikes; those responsible for ecological devastation and
teaching new^ methods of torture, Some are the perpetrators of massacres
and urban bombir^^s. The Pentagon Papers give a partial list of the crimes
and the criminals: the Watergate revelations and dissection of the Nixon
organization provides another partial listing. The criminals must he brought
to justice.

The heroes and heroines of this period are those wdro opposed no
matter how inarticulately, not matter w^hat the medium— the aggression in
Vietnam. This includes deserters and draft resisters, those dishonorably
discharged and those still in stockades, the court marslialled and tlic fraggers.
It includes the thousands of GTTs who left the service witlj less than
honorable discharges. It also ineludes civilians who were arrested and charged
with acts of opposing the w^ar, those who lost jobs and sacrificed careers,
those who are fugitives or still in prison for their opposition.

Those wfjo opposed the war in Vietnam deserve total vindication.
Raise the demand:

A SINGLE-TYPE DISCHARGE FOR ALL VETERANS!

UNCONDITIONAL AMNESTY FOR ALL WAR RESISTERS!

THE WAR TO EXPLAIN THE W^AR

The falsification of history of the Vietnam War began years ago and
continues to this day. The falsification of history is a most powerful weapon,
used against Black people, working people, women and Native Americans.
Nixon and his strategic advisors —his coterie of ad men— have generated vast
energy, spent millions of dollars and used every political swindle to hide the
true story of the Vietnam W'ar from the US people.

Nixon and his class are scared because the Vietnam W'^ar exposed so
much. It is essential to them to convince the US people that withdrawal was
“peace with honor,” that resistance to the war inside the US never had any
effect or consequence on its end, that Vietnam was the “most selfless war in
history.” The barbaric Christmas bombing was murder for propaganda —a
cruel attempt to cover US defeat with a show of terror. POW’s have beeri
used, trying to whip up a mood of tinny patriotism and panicky reaction
where it would be easy to attack anti-war people and justify the most
barbarous Nixon policies. It hasn’t worked, but the battle is far from over.

W'e must all become teachers, using pictures, maps, books, slides,
and newspaper clippings as tools. The true history of Vietnam must be taken
to the people and fought for. The War to Explain the War should not be
taken lightly by us; it is taken dead seriously by our enemies.

THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT ^

OF SOUTH VIETNAM

The Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam is an
internationally recognized government. It receives aid from many socialist
countries. In a beautiful and historic act of international solidarity, Fidel
Castro visited Quang Tri Province last year, the first head of state to enter
liberated South Vietnam. In the liberated zones, the foundation for socialism
is being built. South Vietnam could possibly develop the next socialist
revolution to occur in the world. Support for the PRG is a priority.

Life in the liberated zones of South Vietnam is organized
collectively and run for the benefit of the whole people. North Vietnam has
made tremendous sacrifices and served as the base area for the liberation in
the South. With time, the liberated zones will grow in size and population, as
more and more Vietnamese flee the oppression and dislocation of bfe under
Thieu. W'^ithout the countryside, the cities cannot survive and will eventually
faU.

The liberation armed force.s continue to grow and continue to
retaliate for attacks made by Thieu forces against the PRG territory. Only a
massive re-intervention of US ground troops can postpone the eventual
collapse of the Saigon regime. Recognizing this, Nixon tries to ignore the
PRG, referring to Thieu as the “legitimate” government of South Vietnam.

The strength of our support for the PRG wiU affect how long it takes for
reunification to occur. The revolutionary movement must demand that the
Cease-Fire Agreement be upheld and raise the slogan:

DEFEND THE PRG

NO AID TO THIEU
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS
DEFEND THE PRG
HANDS OFF LAOS
US OUT OF CAMBODIA

We are a people who understand the price of solidarity. Many
people who are living in comfort, who do not suffer from
hunger or cold, whose house stays here for a hundred years
not destroyed at ail, they do not understand the price of
solidarity. But we understand what solidarity means no
matter how small it may be. In our people, there is a saying;
a piece of bread for you when are hun^y is more precious
than a banquet when you are better . . . That is why, dear
friends, don't believe that your actions are so
ineffective . . , please don’t believe here that anything you
state in solidarity with Vietnam, anything you are doing, any
minute you spend in the cold before the American
embassy . . . any poster painted on the wall ... all these acts
are more valuable for us than all the gold you may give us.

Le Van Sau
PRG representative
December 2, 1972

III. ON THE ROAD:
IMPRESSIONS OF US HISTORY

One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk.

Tashunka TVitko
(Gazy Horse)

The man over there says women need to be helped in
carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place
everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages or over
puddles, or gives me the best place — ^and ain't I a woman?
Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted and gathered
into barns, and no man could head me --and ain't I a
woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man
—when I could get it —and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a
woman?! have borne thirteen children, and seen most of
’em sold into slavery, and when I cried out with mother’s
grief, none but Jesus heard me —and ain’t 1 a woman?

Sojouner Truth

I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this
guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood, I had
as I now think vainly flattered myself that without very
much bloodshed it might be done,

John Brown

o o o o o

/\ people's history is a powerful weapon* In the hands of the
oppressors, history is twisted and caricatured. In the arsenal of the
revolution, it tulips us draw the difficult lessons from past struggles and
identify the resistance w hich has always opposed the enemy*

But history is a weapon only if used honestly, only if reverses as
well as high-points, accoruodatlon with empire and white supremacy as well
as resistance to it. are looked at straight-on. Looking at the “Founding
Fathers’" as our radical predecessors or viewing our history as all struggle and
no compromise does nothing to help us understand our present situation.

yhe real history of the L.S is almost totally unknown to the US
people. The mo^t important parts have been buried, falsified, hidden from
our view. US history is a product of the conflict between European invaders
and Native Anieneaiis, white masters and Hkek slaves, the cx>ionizing army
^nd the colonized, bosses and w^orkers* male supremacists and w^omen,
imperialists and anii-imperialists. What must be unearthed are the
possibilities for liluTation ai any given time* how far these were carried, what
held us back, what basis was laid for future struggles, including our own.

This history is not meant to be definitive; it is not a complete or
cfirono logical analysis of the US past. We foeus on and analyze the periods
w^hieh mark intersf'etions or qualitative turning points in the people’s
struggle. Many critical periods are riot examined, others are looked at only in
passing. This analysis represents the beginning of a process, not its final
conclusion. With the t'S government now organizing for a patriotic outburst
in 1976, this is an important time to begin learning real lessons from. US
history, preparing to take them to the people. The Bicentennial Period can
be transformed mlo a time of action and organizing, demolishing the myths,
drawdng on the exam pics and the battles which have come before us.

IN THE BEGINiVING: Genocide, Slavery, Racism

The true history of the Americas begins ^ith the original peoples of
the hemisphere: the rise o) the brilliant soeiclics of the Mayas and the
Tollecs, the Caribs in the Indies, the Incas of Peru, the Aztees of Me\ico, the
Tainos of Borinquen (now Puerto Rico), the Iroquois of the Northeast and
the Pueblos in the Southwest of the US, This history continues today from
l^atin America to Alaska.

The first significant European intervention was by Christopher
Columbus, an Italian in the pay of GeiLoan capital, w^ho sailed under the flag
of Spain. Columbus noted his first day on American soil that 'The people are
ingenious and would make good servants." When (iolurnbus returned to
Hispaniola (Haiti-Sanlo Domingo), the oecupying army he left to oversee the
mining of Hispariolian gold had been wiped out by the Carib people*
Columbus attacked again, this time subduing the resistance and beginning
systematic genocide against the Indians. Jn 1492, there w^ere somewhat
under 300, ()00 American Indians living in Hispaniola, By 1512, there were
less than 14,000 Indians left on the Columbus plantations.

Whole areas lust their native populations in this way as the Spanish
colonialists worked millions of Indians to death. Since mines and plantations
are run for profit, and couldn’t w^ork witliout slaves, tlie Spanish did two
things: they turned to the trade in African slaves to “rcpopulate"’ the
Caribbean, and they also '"rationalized'’ their plantation system. This was to
insure that the new^ slaves w^ould live loiw enough to "'breed.”

In Mexico and South America, the Spanish adopted a system of
peonage, a form of serfdom, A class of Mestizos, persons of Spanish and
Indian descent, developed. This system was carried to what is now^ the
Soutlnvest and California.

The British colonics w^ere populated mainly by settlers. A w^hole
group of dissenters, poor farmers, and workers lied poverty and oppression
to come to the New World. Many were indentured servants, or chronically
unemployed. Others wmre poor people sentenced to long prison terms or
deportation for small crimes. There were also some rich "gentlemen farmers”
and mercenaries out for loot.

There was plenty of land in North America to he had by stealing it
from the American Indians, In the South, land was suitable for tobacco,
indigo, rice, sugar eane, and eventually, cotton. These crops required a
plantation economy and a large labor force. But wuth so much land for the
taking, wdiu w^ould labor cheaply enough to make the plantation owmers
rich ?

Only forced labor —slaves. Chat lei slaves lhal is, not people but
commodities, having no family worth respecting, no personal rights or
properly, bound for life and generations to come.

Historically, the cultural and social justification of slavery had been
religious. This was true during the Crusades in Europe and in the Mideast,
and w^as carried by feudal Spain into its conquests in the Caribbean and
South arid Central America. Religion was the main ideological control of
feudal society and early eapitalism. Chattel slavery was dtTcnded as the
means of saving the souls of "ignorant hcalhcrts” from eternal hell-fire by

giving them the “blessing” of Christianity.

When Columbus exterminated the Indians of the Caribbean and
replaced them with Black slaves from Africa, several important changes
occurred. The plantations grew cash crops for the market and became highly
profitable. Slavery became the most powerful lever of expanding capitalism.
The slave trade in human bodies was itself most profitable; together with
eheaper food and raw materials, this assured the victory of booming
mercantile capitalism over the weaker economy of feudalism.

Slavery was never a separate economy in the Caribbean or the
Southern colonies of North America —it served the capitalist market and
capitalist production from the very first. Huge profits from the slave trade
went to the commercial ports of the budding industrial areas of the
Northeast and New York. In short, the cornerstone of “free enterprise” is
the enslavement of Black Africans.

In the British colonies of North America, unlike the Spanish
colonies, there was a population of poor workers and farmers, competing
religious groups, plus traditions of dissent and ideas about “free-born
Englishmen.” No matter how idealized these notions might have been, the
fact of class struggle by a mainly Anglo, Dutch, and German white
population made the problems of control different than those of the
Caribbean where there were no Spanish workers, other than soldiers. The
Spanish Catholic Church, as a unified institution of the Spanish authoritarian
state, was itself a powerful means of control with its missions, which were
actually plantations as well.

In the southern part of the Brit ish colonies of North America,
conversion of Blacks to Christianity tended to break down the traditional
barriers between poor, indentured whites and Black slaves. During the 17th
century, Blacks and whites escaped together from forced labor, intermarried,
rebelled together in the West Indies, Virginia, South Carolina and Maryland.
Virginia planters passed a Fugitive Act in 164.3 which ordered that runaway
slaves should serve additional time twice the length of their absence and
should be branded with an R (for rogue) for a second offense.

Struggles continued to develop around length of service and
working conditions. The faintest possibility of unity among the different
classes of the oppressed terrified the slaveowners. Because of this,
distinctions of color and origin were promoted into an entire system of
racism. Africans were made slaves for life, while the white servants were to
be freed after a set period. The planters began the conscious cultivation of
the whites as overseers, using the myth of the “free-born Englishman” in
contrast to the African —now deemed an animal, less than human.

Discrimination based on color did already exist in Europe, North
Africa ind the Mid east. However, these ideas were still incidental and
subordinate to concepts of native or foreigner, Christian or pagan, aristocrat
Or peasant.

Racism as a prime social and cultural dividing line was born in
North America, out of slavery —it was born out of greed for profit,
perpetrated by deception and a monopoly of firearms, not of biological
superiority real or imagined. The notion that slavery is somehow based upon
racial and cultural inferiority of African and other Third World peoples has
been deeply embedded into every US institution as the chief means of
brainwashing and using the white population.

The importance of this to us is that it licgioc to focus on thfr other,
hidden side of our history that the rulers conceal.

Racism is not only directerl at Hlack people -it is also aimed at
controlling whites to keep Black people in slavery, and the rulers firmly in
command.

The institiitionalizing of white supremacy created a structure to
divide the white worker and small farmer from the Black slave. Coupled with
the economic bribe of white privilege, it is the corner-stone of US history,
the rock upon which capitalism and imperialism have been erected. It is not
the material bribe alone that is effective; it the bribe plus seli''justifi(^ation,

social approval and status^ backed up by punishment for non-confonnity,
that does the trick.

The US invented a new kind of racism and a more horrible form of
slavery. It has been building on this ever since, and exporting its variety of
racism to the rest of the world.

The African slave trade was aii unprecedented event in human
history. The modern slave trade went on lor 350 y{^ais. It came to an end
about 100 years ago. Africans were kidnapped on the West (loal: of Africa
and brought to the West Indies in exchange for tobacco, cotton, rice and
molasses. In turn, slaves and the sugar products were carried to the mainland
colonies, which sentfood to the West Indies, tobacco and rice lo Europe, and
distilled rum (from molasses) to Africa. The first African slave arrived here in
1619. By 1770, 4/5 of all colonial exports was rum to Africa. Ten to fifteen
million Africans were landed in the Americas. More than that —estimates
range from between 20 and 200 million- died on the way. This was the
triangular slave trade, the very foundation of rising capitalism.

NATIVE AMERICAN RESISTANCE: The Early Stages

Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a
struggle, give up our homes, our country bequethed to us by
the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is
dear and sacred tous*? 1 know you will cry with meUNever,
Never!

Tecumtha

In North America, Native Americans prevented their enslavement as
a people by fighting for their land and freedom. Indians waged protracted
wars of resistance, holding out in parts of the US until IB90, In spite of the
destruction of whole nations, Indian culture and Indian people survive and
fight to this day.

Perhaps two million Native Americans witliin what is now^ the VS
were killed in battle, died as slaves due to extreme overwork and little food,
or from white man’s diseases like measles and small pox. They could not be
captured in sufficierR numbers to supply the labor for(^e needed to enrich
the European slaveowmers and merchants,

when the attempt to enslave Indians failed, the colonizers went on
to destroy Indian power and seize their land. King Phillip, leader of the

Wampanoags (the rescuers of the starving Pilg?-iras —an event ritualized at
Thanksgiving) understood what was happening. He worked to bring together
neighboring nations and drive the settlers out. His armies fought hard,
attacking 52 of the 90 New England colonial towns. Internal disputes, a hard
winter, betrayals and superior fire-power defeated the rebellion, w'hich ended
in August, 1676. Many Indians, along with King Phillip, were killed.

During the colonial period, except at the very first when the settlers
were weak and couldn’t make it on their own, few whites accepted Indians
as human beings. Some backwood people, a number of runaway servants,
religious outcasts and dissenters were friendly. Considerable numbers of
escaped slaves also developed ties with Indian people, notably the Seminoles
in Florida.

But, the prevailing attitudes were expressed by the Dutch patroons
introducing tomahawks in New Amsterdam (later to become New York
City) to frontiersmen eager to scalp Indians for §100 bounty —a huge sum
tor those days. This was the origin of the saying, “The only good Indian is a
dead Indian.” The colonist came from poor, depressed parts of Europe, eager
for land. The desire for land, and with it freedom from servitude and wage
labor, dominated early colonial and US history. Land ownership was a viable
resolution of many social and class contradictions.

In 1763, the British forbade colonial expansion beyond the
Appalachian mountains. This curbed the land speculations of the wealthiest
colonialists, like George Washington, Ben Franklin and Patrick Henry. It was
One of the causes of the Revolution of 1776.

After the Revolution, the speculators felt free to move into the
West. Many Indian tribes understood the government’s intentions. W'hile the
American Revolution w^as fought against the fetters imposed by British
colonialism on the rapidly developing colonial economy, it was certainly not
fought in the interests of either Native Americans or Black slaves. Consider
the following condemnation of King George in the Declaration of
Independence:

He has excited domestic insurrection amongst us and has
endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of the frontiers, the
merciless Indian savages, whose know'n rule of warfare is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

Declaration of Independence

Washington’s troops burned Iroquois villages during the
Revolutionary War, Not one major tribe lined up with the colonists during
the Revolution.

In 1787, Congress authorized the takeover of the Ohio Valley. The
Shawnee and the Miami, united by thirty years of struggle, fought back. Led
by Little Turtle, they defeated a 1400-raan US force in 1790, and in 1791
routed St, Clair’s army of two thousand. In 1794, Mad Anthony Wayne
invaded Indian territory, defeated the Shawnee at Fallen Timbers, and
celebrated the victory by burning every Indian village on the W'ay back to his
fort. The victors forced the Treaty of Greenville upon the Indians and
poured in missionaries, whiskey and settlers. But the Indians still did not
capitulate.

From the Shawnee arose a great American Indian leader, Tecumtha
(Panther -Lying-in-Wait), He rallied the nations, travelling from Canada
(Iroquois land) to Missouri (Osage territory! to Florida (Seminole nation).
He argued for unified resistance, denounced alcohol, and with the help
of his brother, called for revival of Indian culture and ways. He saw the
moment as a strategic one: “a last chance such as will never occur again for
us Indians of North America to form ourselves into one great combination.”
Tecumtha allied with the British in the War of 1812, starting off by
capturing Detroit. The British betrayed Tecumtha, who died fighting a year
later.

President Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory from
France in 1803. This territory, almost equal in size to the entire US of that
date, was actually the land of the Sauk, Fox and other Indian tribes. Andrew
Jackson, known as Sharp Knife to the Cherokees, rose to the Presidency by
winning fame as an Indian killer and village burner. He used charges of Indian
violence to move into Florida, Texas and Canada. Jackson was a popular
hero; nearly everyone wanted more land, the only disputes were over how
best to grab it from the Indians. Spearheading the land grab, the US Army
established forts throughout the Indian territory, and began offensive
operations. General Winfield Scott, a leading figure in US wars against
Mexico, was responsible for the Trail of Tears of the Cherokees in 1838. An
entire people were forcibly removed from their homeland in the
Southeastern US and marched all the way to a reservation in Oklahoma. The
wars against the Indians, like the war against Mexico in 1848, was a war of
Conquest, a war for land.

Demands now being made by Native Americans for land for their
own sovereignty as separate nations challenge all the terms upon which the
US built its empire, and this is why the Native American movement has a
special significance for people fighting US imperialism.

P'lTTi:- ■■ ■ ■

BLACK RESISTANCE TO SLAVERY AND
THE RISE OF THE ABOLITIONIST AND WOMEN’S MOVEMENTS

The growing conflict between the Northern and Southern systems
of production laid a basis for the Civil W'ar. The Southern system was based
on slavery and the cultivation of cotton as a main crop. In 1793, the
invention of the cotton gin gave the cotton industry, and with it slavery, a
new economic boost. Tt made cleaning the Southern short-staple cotton
fairly efficient. More abundant and cheaper cotton also helped expand the
textile industry in the Northeast, which became the center for
manufacturing, Cotton cultivation exhausted the soil, which created the
continuing need for expansion of the plantation system into new territory.

Up to 1860, the Southern slaveowners attempted to expand the
slave system, Seaboard Atlantic states turned to stave breeding, while the
expansionists eyed Cuba and Central America. Northern collaboration and
compromise aided the planters. The seizure of Texas in 1836 from Mexico
and it,s admission to the Union was part of slave-owners’ plots to introduce
six new slave states into the Union.

But many Northern industrialists and financiers recognized that the
further spread of slavery would stifle their own ambitions; more profits and
more political stability could be had by opening up the West and Southwest
to industrial exploitation and “free farming,” The planters won a great legal
victory in 1857, with the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision which
sanctioned the introduction of slavery into any free territory, even against
the will of the majority of the settlers.

It was the continued resistance of Black staves and their allies which
finally brought matters to a head. As early as 1793, Toussaint L’Ouverture
led a famous slave revolution in Haiti against the French. The Haitian
Revolution terrified the Southern slaveowners who feared that the example
would spark similar uprisings in North America. Toussaint’s forces used
drums to communicate with each other; drums were now banned from the
Southern plantations. Each rebellion spread panic throughout the
slave-holding South: Gabriel Prossers’s in Virginia in 1800; Denmark Vesey’s
in South Carolina in 1822; the Amistad Mutiny led by Joseph Cinque (from
whom Ruchel Cinque Magee and SLA Field Marshal Cinque take their names
today) in 1831; and Nat Turner’s uprisings in Virginia in 1831. In 1829,
David Walker, a freed Black man, published David Walker’s Appeal, which
called upon the slaves to rise up in revolution against their bondage.

Escape was a major form of slave resistance. Black soldiers
returning from the War of 1812 brought back the news that slavery was
outlawed in Canada. Routes of flight, twisting networks of paths, developed
across the Appalachians, up thru the Ohio and along the Eastern seacoast.
These were the routes of the Underground Railroad, which in the 1840’s
prided itself on being the only railroad guaranteed not to break down. In the
1850’s, something like five hundred Black people a year penetrated the
South under the most dangerous conditions to lead others to freedom.
Harriet Tubman —called Moses by the slaves— was the most famous
conductor. Not intimidated by a huge bounty on her head, she led hundreds
North without ever losing a passenger. She said:

"There are two things Tve got a right
to, and these are death and liberty. One or the other I mean
to have. No one will take me back alive/’

ilf 'falrsf

, By RICHAKI) CLAGETT. / \

On Tuesday, Match Sih^ 1933 at 1-00 P. M- the foltowinO < ;
Sldv 0 § tffiW be eold at Posters Mart, in Charleetpn, AC

Miec^llancous IMs «/ Negroee, meetly hhuee kervunUt eonij^ ^ \ ^
far jUld work, " ^

CanditUm^t % «uli, tMUnc« hy bond, iAterMfi fron^ ^

. «i PaTvble Ib to two to bo oocond b^ o ^oitjojo Wt tb« ^ . \

yieyroeSt ond povooaol ooearitj^. teitl pay jfor

tAe papere.

K vtlotblc Negro womjia^ ac^cu^tomed to all kinds of bouse work. Is a good
pUuo cook* and excellent dairy maid, washes aOd irona. bas four children, one
a firi about 13 years of age, imothet 7, a boy about 5, ud'mn infant 11 months old.

2 of the eiUldreo will be sold with mother, the others separately, if it best suits the
psirciaior. . , ,-

■

A very valuable Blacksmith, wife and daughters; the. Smith isin the prime
of life, an^ a perfect master at his trade. His wife about 27 years old, and his
daughters 12 and 10 years old have been brought up as bouse servants, and as fueb
are very valuable. Also for sale Z likely young negro wenches, one of whom is 16
the other 13, both of whom have been taugjit aad accustomed to the duties of house
seryants. The 16 year old wench has one eye,

A Ukely yellow girl about 17 or Ig years old, Has b^ a^ustomed to all kinds
of bouse ^d garden wofic. She is sold for no fault, Sound as a dollar.

House servants' The owner of a family de^bed herein, would sell them
for a good price only, they are offered for no fault whatever, but because they can
be done without, and money is needed^ He has been, offered f 1250 . They consist of :
a biaa 10 io 33 years old, who has be^tmjsed in a genteel Virginia ^family house

servanc Carr^ge driver etc,, b^all which t^e exe^vHis wife a likefy wepch Of 25 to
30 raised in like manner^ as chamber maid, se^tn^trees* nurse etc.* their twb^cbild-
reo, girls of 12 and 4 or 5. They arc bright mulattoes* df miM tractiWe disposttio&s*
ofUMuming manners, vid of worthy the notice of a

gentleman of fortune needing sueb^

■ .- ■ . . ■ f' ■

V Also 14 Negro ^Ver^ches tanging from 16 to 2S years of age, aH sound and-
,jeapab1e?of doing a good days work In the house or field.

The success of the Underground Railroad resulted in the passage of
the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which ordered Northerners to return escaped
slaves to the South and legalized the practice of vigilantes and slave-hunters*
Quakers, New Englanders ^ Pennsylvanians, Ohioans cooperated with Black
people to rescue some 75,000 slaves in this brave episode in our history*

Black resistance defined the militant terms of the anti-slavery fight,
and was an example to the two mass movements which grew up alongside
the Black struggle —the Women’s Movement and the Abolitionists*

During the early 1800’s large numbers of women entered the textile
mills and factories of New- England for the first time* Often they found
themselves at odds with the lOth century standards of factory decorum and
with the fact that they were paid far less than men doing the same work* The
first strike by women took place in Dover, New Hampshire mills in 1828,
Proletarianization of US women in the Northeast, the social contact in the
mills, was a background for the upsurge in consciousness and protest among
women which would develop over the next few decades. Bourgeois women,
recently freed from household chores like weaving, sewing
and soap^making, also began to chafe at the limitations imposed on them
because of sex*

From the earliest days of the anti-slavery fight, courageous women
like Fanny Wright and Maria Stewart defied scorn and ridicule in order to
speak out in public* Soon Female Anti-Slavery Societies were formed
throughout the North, trying to recruit activists for the Underground
Railway, to write, persuade, and awaken their sisters to the tyranny of
slavery* Women raised both the issue of abolition and equality for women*
Slaveholders and male supremacists responded with threats of mob violence
and bitter attacks on the women’s character and reputations* Angelina and
Sarah Grimke, born to a Southern slave-holding family, spoke out on “both
freedoms” and opposed more conservative elements in the anti-slavery
movement who were afraid of losing support if the subject of women’s
freedom was raised*

In 1840, the Anti-Slavery Convention in London refused to seat
women* Experienced and tireless US women abolitionists w^ere forced to sit
behind curtains while the main debate went on* Charles Revson, a Black
abolitionist, and William Lloyd Garrison, joined the women as a protest*
Eight years later, the women’s convention at Seneca Falls, New York, called
for unconditional equality for women:

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and
usurpations on the part of man towards woman, having in
direct object the establishment of absolute tyranny over her*

To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world*

Seneca Falls

For over a quarter of a century* until a serious split developed after
the Civil War, the two movements “to free the slaves and to liberate
women— nourished and strengthened each other. White women openly
advocated freedom for Black people; white and Black women walked calmly

together thru mobs of angry men^ openly challenging the paranoia of
plantation morality with its emphasis on the protection of dependent white
women. This was a bold blow to racist and sexist ideology*

Contrary to the lies of official bourgeois history, the abolitionists
were not abstract moralists, but a social movement based on the urgent
necessity to end slavery. There were fierce struggles within the movement
over goals and tactics. The abolitionists were split over the question of
revolutionary violence, with a substantial number of white abolitionists
unwilling to accept the terms of the anti-slavery struggle. The leadership of
free Black people and escaped slaves like Henry Garnet, David Walker,
Harriet Tubman, Frede^riek Douglass and Sojourner Truth consistently
pushed the abolitionists to more militant stands. National conventions of
Black people in the North advocated the armed overthrow of the slave
system while some abolitionists put forward notions of slaves going quietly
back to Africa, Douglass’ paper, The North Star, was a voice for immediate
emancipation and full rights for Blacks, Douglass argued for militant
resistance to slavery:

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess
to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who
want crops without plowing up the ground. They want the
ocean without the awfu! roar of its many waters*

The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one,
and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a
struggle* Power concedes nothing without a demand* It never
did, and it never will*

At their best, the abolitionists refused to ignore, and more, refused
to let anyone else ignore, the reality of slavery* We see in the abolitionists
the beginnings of a tradition of mass white support for Black liberation; the
tensions and disagreements within the movement were not unlike those our
own movement has faced —especially concerning Black people’s right to
direct their own struggle.

Abolitionists were called fanatics, lunatics and promoters of
rebellion. Garrison’s defense of the Nat Turner Rebellion, in which 60 white
people were killed, brought the wrath of the slavery forces upon him. But he
escalated, carrying out a speaking tour of New England, From the large
crowds which turned out to hear him came the first meeting for the New
England Anti-Slavery Society held on January 1, 1832, They called for
immediate emancipation of slaves without any compensation to the
slaveowners*

Simultaneously, a campaign for education and literacy went on
clandestinely in the South, more openly in the North. The precious and
outlawed right of Black people to read became a battleground —as it yet is
today. Prudence Crandall opened her school in Connecticut to tw'cnty or
thirty Black girls in 1831; this led to her imprisonment, the burning down of
her house, and attempts to suppress the school.

Abolitionists like the Grimke sisters, Frederick Douglass, Harriet
Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Wendell Phillips engaged in struggles for
prison reforms, against capital punishment, in support of Indian rights, and
equal rights for women. Theodore Parker hid Black fugitives in his Boston
church and protected them with guns.

And then there was old Osawatamie, John Brown, Brown led the
four years of guerrilla warfare in Kansas, which kept that state from falling
to the slavers. It was the victory in Kansas which drove the South to secede
before the anti-slavery forces grew too much stronger. W.E.B. Du Bois
marked this as the start of the Civil War.

In 1859, John Brown, with a band of Kansas free-soilers and
ex-slaves, attacked the Harper’s Ferry arsenal in Western Virginia, in direct
response to the Dred Scott decision. Harriet Tubman planned to participate
but was too ill to go along. John Brown’s courage and sacrifice have been
maligned as insanity, but he had a practical plan which almost worked.
Even in defeat, he accomplished his stated goal of polarizing the mass of
Northerners against davery. Brown’s action helped destroy the slave
economy of Virginia as many plantation owners, terrified by the accelerating
number of slave uprisings following Brown’s raid, sold their slaves in panic.

The Harpers’ Ferry action was an effective use of armed struggle to
sharpen an already-ripe poUtical situation. John Brown is an example to us
of dedication, belief in people’s power to affect history and the willingness
to risk everything in the cause of liberation.

RECONSTRUCTION AND BETRAYAL

The Civil War began as a war fought by white people over the
“future of the Union.’’ At first, the US government ignored Black people;
there was no attempt to recruit them into the Union Army, they were not
allowed to enlist. Union soldiers were forbidden to sing “John Brown’s
Body.’’ Slavery, the underlying cause of the war, was a suppressed issue.

Over time, pushed by its wartime need for laborers and soldiers,
and by the eagerness of Black people to fight against the slave-owners, the
North moved toward emancipation. Fugitive slaves, including Harriet
Tubman, joined the Northern forces. General Tubman led her troops in
dangerous scouting and guerrilla operations during the war.

With emancipation in 1863, thousands of Blacks joined the army.
Before the war’s end, 200,000 Black people fought for the Union, often in
the front lines as shock troops; 300,000 more helped as laborers, scouts and
spies for the North. Many other Black women and men left the plantations,
in a general strike against the planters. This crippled the slave economy and
the Southern war effort.

The Emancipation Proclamation legally freed four million Black
people from chattel slavery. Abraham Lincoln acted in order to win the war
and because the slaves were already freeing themselves. This was an
important victory for Black people and the Abolitionist movement they had
inspired. A sense of optimism and determination to consolidate and extend
their gains swept thru the Black population in the South, In the post-war
Reconstruction pmod, unique in US history, Blacks and their white allies
began a remarkable effort to transform the Southern system.

Black historians —notably DuBois— have challenged the lies of the
standard history of Reconstruction, which all of us were taught in school. In
his book Bbusk Reconstruction, DuBois catalogues the tremendous
achievements of the Reconstruction era ; poor and Black people participating

in government for the first time, voting and holding office; the introduction
of progressive income tax; the first massive public school program in the
South ; tentative attempts at land redistribution; the temporary
disenfranchisement of many planters/slaveholders; the abolition of
imprisonment for debt; the expansion of women's rights in marriage. Black
people raised the demand for ^ 'forty acres and a mule" for every ex-slave,
since without land reform, emancipation would leave them at the mercy of
the planter class. This demand was never met because its content challenged
not only the planters but also the Northern interests who were in the process
of taking over Southern agriculture.

Gains made in public education are testimony to the progressive
character of ReconstrucHon. At the end of the Civil War, there were no
public schools in the South; by 1870 there were 250,000 children in 4300
schools. This was the result of an astonishing effort by hundreds of Northern
volunteers and abolitionists, with the substantial support of Southern Black
communities and families, 45% of the teachers were women —Black women
from the South, white women from the North. The schools they built
survived the overthrow of Reconstruction, but were later rigidly segregated
by race,

This w^as a time of slow, painstaking efforts by Blacks to build
working relationships uith the dispossessed whites of the South, alliances
which never developed fully. They were finally shattered when Northern
capital and the remnants of the old planter class re-assumed control. The
support of poor whites, working people and other progressive whites for
Reconstruction also involved tens of thousands of Northern white men and
women who came South as volunteers —the ''carpetbaggers," slandered and
defamed by later generations. Reconstruction was one of the high points of
unity between Black and white overcoming white supremacy and racism in
our history. This is why it has been \sTitten out of the history texts.

The pro-Reconsiruction forces had great strength for a while. They
failed by only one vote to comict President Andrew Johnson after
impeaching him for supporting the ex^slaveowncrs and sabotaging
Reconstruction, Johnson won because the capitalist North, victorious over
its former and future partners, the Southern planters, was eager to get on
with the conquest of the WesL Crushing Reconstruction involved the
conscious reinstatement of w^hite supremacy patterns in order to destroy a
kind of people's unity which, if not defeated in the South, could have spread
to class war in the North itself.

The counterrevolution came disguised as the "compromise of
1877." The word "compromise" should read "betrayal: " Northern
Republicans sold out the Black population by allowing federal troops to be
withdrawn from the South, leaving ex-slaves and white Reeonstructionists
Open to the terror-campaigns of the planter class. Some of these troops were
then sent North to help break strikes; others were used in the final military
campaigns against the Oglalas, Hunkpapas, Cheyennes and Ne^ Perce.

A new power alliance emerged in the L-S: old and new Southern
planters were restored to local power by accepting Northern capital’s
domination in both Southern agriculture and industry. This rule was
enforced by the terror of the Ku Klux Klari. The Klan was established by the

plantfr class to prevent Black people and their white allies from
consolidating their political gains. Through the Klan, tike the old slave
patrols, poor whites helped terrorize and control Blacks. Black people were
forced back into subjugation through mob violence and lynching, Jim Crow
laws and wholesale disenfranchisement, and white skin became the cultural
definition of pow'er once again. While there were scattered attempts at
Black-white unity in these days, they fell apart as many poor whites
destroyed the basis for genuine alliance by defending white supremacy.

With the planters restored to the land, Black people w'ere thrust
back into a new form of slavery -sharecropping. Sharecroppers rented plots
of land from the planters, and in return, kept a small share of what they
produced. Sharecroppers provided the planters with the bulk of the cotton
Crop, and had to rent tools and other necessities from them. Black
sharecroppers were in debt, bound to the planters, enslaved. The
consolidation of class rule and the crushing of the popular movement
wrecked the hopes for a new South; the South remains an underdeveloped
region of the US to this day.

Defeating Reconstruction was a prerequisite to the completion of
continental expansion and the strengthening of capitalist power. It was
accomplished by terror, the lynch rope and treachery. Supposed white allies
deserted Black freedmen and w’omen. The hopeful possibilities of the era
were shattered by all the forces of racist order and a decisive step was taken
on the road to full-blowm, modern US imperialism.

EXPANSION AND CONQUEST:

THE BIRTH OF MODERN US IMPERIALISM

Throughout this time, the US was consolidating its hold over
Mexican and Indian land. Once New Mexico and California were seized, the
looting of land and minerals proceeded rapidly. Through the destruction of
Mexican land titles. Mestizo farmers were reduced to laborers on their own
land. Mexicans, along with imported Chinese and Filipino laborers, became
the chief cheap labor supply for the farms, cattle ranches, mines and
railroads of this strategic part of the W'est. California provided important
deep water ports on the Pac ific Ocean, industrial sites and gold.

Northern industrialists had moved ahead with the Transcontinental
and Santa Fe Railroads. The former was built by Chinese and Irish labor, the
latter by Mexicans. As railroads moved West, the last of the Indian lands
were conquered. By the late 1870's, the heart of the Indian resistance was
shattered. Crazy Horse was assassinated by government agents in 1877 at
Fort Robinson, Nebraska. In 1890, the US Army committed the W'ounded
Knee Massacre, Rumors of an Ifidian resurgence had been sweeping the
country. The Ghost Dance, a Paiute prophecy of a return to Native power,
had taken root at Pine Ridge Reservation, When the US Army attacked on
December 29, 1890 il was not a spontaneous crime. It was an attempt to
wdpe out “hostile” Indians, to commit genocide against the Oglala nation.
Over 300 Indians were killed, many^ women and children —afterwards, 18
cavalry-men received Congressional Medals of honor for “gallantry” and
“bravery.”

This was the age of the robber barons, the time >vhen Roekefelier,
Morgan and Carnegie made theu first stolen fortunes. The normal cycles of
eapitalisi production glutted markets and caused a series of depressions. In
the 27 years between the panic of 1873 and 1900, over half were years of
depression. As the big industrialists and financiers made their money, the
people went Imngry and w^ere forced out of work. Capitalism squeezed its
dome^^tie work force to the bone, and the w^orkers in the new^ Northern and
Western industrial centers of the working class raised the spectre of class
warfare at a lime wdicn the frontier, the traditional safety valve for class
discQiitenI , w^as shrinkirtg. Workers were crowding the cities, forming new
communities, understanding the need for collective action,

Tlic era of munopoly capitalism was dawning. The ruling class
looked to colonial expansion as the solution to economic crisis and rising
class discontent.

Revolt within the Spanish Empire opened opportunities in the
Caribbean and the Plulippine Islands, Rival imperialist powers \vere engaged
in full-scale contention over the penetration of China, so the idea of a
strategic base in the Philippines was tempting.

The Spa rush -American War of 1898 was a case of imperialist
aggression cloaked in demo (ira tic slogans. The McKinley Administration at
first justified ihe war as an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist support to the
rebelling Cuban, Puerto Rican and Filipino peoples. The Battle ship Maine
was sent to 1 lavana and sunk as a final incitement,

Puerto lliccj was seized as a LIS colony. Cuba was not seized
outright' it was inslead made a protectorate with control imposed by Itie US
througfi Hie hated Platt Amendment. The L‘S occupied Guantanamo and set
up a rjaval base there. This base remains a constant L'S colonial presence in
liberated Cuba.

In the PliilippincKS, Theodore Roosevelt, the Assistant Secrclary of
the Navy, and Senator Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts hat(died plots with
Admiral Dew ey to Manila and prepare armed intervention to recolonizc
the Island. Ry ihe time Dewey got there, the Filipino liberation forces had
taken all ihc rest: of the country from the Spanish, A phony attack on liS
lines outside of Manila was staged (a model for the '‘attack” Johnson staged
on (lie I S Navy in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1965) and the
counteTTevoiutionary war was 0 !i, It lasted six years, required a US force of
9(U{)()1} soldiers at its peak, and ended w ith 600,000 Filipinos dead on Luzon
Island alo!U : Ttfosc who lived found themselves under harsher rule than even
that of Spam. Finpinos lo tins day are fighting guerrilla warfare against
LS'^^ippb^d troops acjd a L'S bai k^ d n<a)coUHUal regime.

As tiic war wcnl on, and US soliders died from wounds and
diseases, the truth about Filipino resistance came out and direct racist and
cconornit^ app{^als to workers and businessmen replaced cover-ups about
fighiiiig for Fiiipjuo freedom. William Randolph Hears! made his fortune by
whippiisg jjp racist war fever in liis columns. The Hcarst papers ran banner
tmadlines, arguing that the “y<dlow^ peril” must be defeated.

There was opposition —individuals like Mark I wain, an
an! i-irnpcrialisl league in Massachusetts w'hich grew to have branches in
( Chicago and the Far Wdsit, some workers' organizations (especially among
the Rost(K] Irisli), plus a few abolitionist and populist veterans. But it is
important lo understand why, in spite of strong anti-colonial traditions going

back to Revolutionary War days, most people finally accepted this leap into
full-fledged and open imperialism.

Class struggle at home was muted by plunder abroad. Many workers
supported imperialist expansion as an acceptable way to ease economic crisis
in the US* With the war against the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba, many
US citizens condoned imperialism in the same way they had grown
accustomed to justifying genocide against Native Americans or lynching of
Black sharecroppers.

The ruling class organized for world empire in the same ways it
organized for continental conquest. Racism against Mexican farm-hands and
Chinese laborers was now turned against Cubans, Filipinos and Puerto Ricans.
Internationalism —the commitment to unity in struggle with other people in
other lands against the common enemy— does not spring automatically from
a culture poisoned by slavery, internal colonization and the slaughter of the
native population. It has to be fought for constantly.

Moreover, when leaders of the American Federation of Labor, like
Samuel Gompers, ended up supporting the war against the Philippines, they
began more and more to sabotage the struggles of millions of unorganized
immigrant laborers, women and unskilled workers. They looked down on
these workers as outcasts, and often showed the same contempt for them as
the despised Filipinos and Blacks.

The AFL came to represent mainly the aristocracy of labor. Daniel
de Leon, a socialist organizer, called the AFL the “labor lieutenants of the
capitalist class.’' Based in the highly skilled crafts, elitist, all white, opposed
to militancy, the AFL even then served as an emergency brake on the class
struggle.

THE OPPOSITION:

Miners, Women, Immigrants, W^obblies

Alongside this history of accomodation to imperialism, there are
also the great movements and acts of opposition —the stirrings, the militant
strikes, the courage of the Haymarket martyrs, the w^omen’s
shirt waist makers, the Wobblies, the Molly Maguires, the Western Federation
of Miners, the day-to-day survival struggles of the immigrants. In this disloyal
oppositon, we can recognize our roots.

On May 4, 1886, in Chicago, a workers" rally was called to protest
the murder of striking McCormick Harvester employees a few days before.
As it ended, a bomb was tossed killing one policeman. Seven labor and
anarchist leaders were framed and cojivicted and four were executed for the
act. From this struggle, people all around the world commemorate May Day.
The city of Chicago erected a monument to police power —the statue of a
pobceman which, until recently, stood in Haymarket Square.

In the 1890’s, miners in Colorado and Idaho faced the guns of
federal and state troops as they fought for the eight hour day. After long
hours in the mines, workers would meet, teach each other to read, argue
politics, talk about socialism and revolution. In 1892, the Western
Federation of Miners formed, an organization w^hich led major strikes

throughout the next decade* In the same year, the Homestead Strike was
crushed when federal troops massacred striking steelworkers in Pennsylvania*
In the early 1900's, the labor force underwent a rapid
transformation as fift< en million immigrants came to the US* Those who
came from Europe settled in the industrial and commercial centers in the
East and Midwest, Subject to discrimination, viewed as “unamcrican" by
much of the population, they initiated and led some of the fiercest US labor
struggles*

A movement arose in this period called the Industrial Workers of
the World —the Wobblies* The preamble to the IWW constitution, wTitten in
1905, reads;

The working class and the employing class have nothing in
common* There can be no peace so long as hunger and want
are found among millions of working people and the few,
who make up the employing class, have aU the good things
of life*

Between these two classes, a struggle must go on until the
workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of
the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the
wage system.

The Wobblies came from the miners’ strikes in Colorado, from the
immigrant textile workers of the Eastern commercial centers, from women
workers, from the lumberworkers of the Far West. The IWW challenged the
narrow and elitist craft union approach of the AFL and advocated industrial
unionism —organizing all the workers of an industry into one union. The
Wobblies organized the unorganized and the dispossessed.

The Wobblies had serious weaknesses —they underestimated the
need for strong organization, downplayed political agitation and action, and
never developed an effective long-range strategy.

Although the Wobblies were never the chief force in the labor
movement, their influence was widespread. They participated in thousands
of strikes and actions and helped lead effective mass strikes in Lawrence,
Mass, in 1912, Patterson, N.J. in 1913, and Seattle, Wash, in 1919. The
Wobblies refused to sign labor contracts, always reserving the right to strike.
They advocated revolution and socialism, opposed imperialist war and made
great breakthroughs in w'ork with immigrants, w'omen and children. The
W'obbUes w'ere among the first organizers to recognize the importance of
explaining to the children of strikers' the political issues involved in the
strikes. W'obbly children’s meetings helped in keeping families together
through the long and difficult strikes.

There were many immigrants among the masses of women who
now entered the factories. Often, the bosses placed women of different
nationalities next to one another on workbenches, hoping that language
barriers and cultural differences would hinder the possibility for unity.

Women worked as domestics, in the textile industries of New
England and New York, garment sweatshops, laundry and food services. In
1909 and 1910, the women shirt waist makers strikes erupted in New York
City. Sixty percent of the workers were women, 70% were between the ages
of 16 and 25. They worked .56 hours a week in dingy lofts. Women pushed
the corrupt male union leadership to support their demands for shorter

hours and decent working conditions, 4t one pre-strike meeting, Clara
Lemlich, a young organizer, interrupted the speeches of union officials to
decry the go-slow attitude and call for a strike. In the two months of the
strike, over one thousand strikers were arrested. The shirtwaistmaker’s
militancy spurred the organizing of union shops throughout the entire
garment industry.

These early strikes confronted the Women’s Suffrage Movement
with the importance of joining the Ufe-and-death struggles of their working
sisters. In 1914, the Rockefeller-owned state militia burned a striking miners’
tent colony in Ludlow, Colorado, killing two women and thirteen children.
Thirty miners were shot down in the ensuing battle. Attica was not the first
massacre ordered by a Rockefeller. A suffrage leader named Elizalieth
Freeman led pickets against Rockefeller’s Standard Oil offices in New York
to protest the Ludlow Massacre.

Strikes often stretched out for long months, involved desperate
hunger and want, loss of life and many times despair at crumbling fighting
strength. In these situations, family hardship is tremendous, and the strength
and fighting capacity of women and children become critical. Organizing
retaliation, strike support, food, medical help and supplies, fighting on the
picket lines, persuading scabs not to scab, and holding out, leading, persisting
have all been done by women. Women held special women’s meetings in the
Lawrence and Patterson strikes. They opened up the struggle against the
iord-and-m aster attitude of many of the men, demanded that the full
burdens of housework and raising children be shared.

The official labor movements were worse than indifferent for the

most part. When textile workers and the women in the food industry were
first Organized, it was at the initiative of the women themselves or of radical
left-wing organizers like the Wobblies.

There is a male monopoly on the decisive post of leadership in
traditional unions of women workers. Yet there are names to remember of
great women class fighters: Mother Jones, Ella Reeve Bloor, Elizabeth
Gurley Flynn, Kate Richards O’Hare, Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman.

Women organized and led other social and cultural movements
parallel to the labor struggles and the suffrage movement. Anti-lynching
crusades were waged by heroic Black women, with the sometimes-support of
suffragists and feminists. As summarized by Mary Church Terrell, “Lynching
is the aftermath of slavery.” Between 1865-1895, over 10,000 Black men
were killed without trial. Pretexts for this reign of terror changed over time,
settling finally on avenging assaults on white Southern women. These cruel
rationales were challenged and repudiated by Ida B. Wells Barnett, a Black
journalist who for 40 years investigated each case of lynching and proved
that lynching was a systematic campaign of economic and political terror.
She was founder of the Negro Women’s club movement and challenged white
women’s organizations to take a stand against lynching. She later became a
founder, along with W.E.B. Du Bois, of the NAACP.

Women like Jane Adams and Lillian Wald exposed and fought the
oppressive conditions in immigrant sectors of crowded cities. Women
agitated for decent health care, birth control, education and child labor laws.

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Racism as a prime social and cultural dividing line wag born
in North America, out of slavery —it was born out of greed
for profit, perpetrated by deception and a monopoly of
firearms, not out of biological superiority real or imagined.
The notion that slavery is somehow based upon racial and
cultural inferiority of African and other Third World peoples
has been deeply embedded into every US institution as the
chief means of brainwashing and using the white population.

John Brown is an example to us of dedication, belief in
people’s power to affect history and the willingness to risk
everything in the cause of liberation.

Reconstruction was one of the high points of overcoming
white supremacy and racism in our history. This is why it has
been written out of the history texts.

Internationalism —the commitment to unity in stru^le with
other people in other lands against the common enemy— does
not spring automatically from a culture poisoned by slavery,
internal colonization and the slaughter of the native
population. It has to be fought for constantly.

The long struggle for women’s suffrage %vas w^on in 1920, Women
organizers worked for almost one hundred years to gain the vote, in the
process transforming the eoriseiousness of the whole country. They were
opposed every step of the w^ay. Incredible effort, militancy and patient
organizing were carried out decade after decade for the basic recognition of
women’s humanity and role in socielv,

■p*

The cost paid for this \ictory, however, was great. The suffrage
movement came to include open iirguments for giving women the vote on
anti -ini migrant grounds and in order to maintain a white majority (since
Black w^omen w^ould face disenfranchisement in the South), Anti-foreign and
anti-Indian rationales were used by suffragists who posed the vote for
enlightened, church-going w^omen against the spectre of the coarse vicious
and ignorant population of the slums. Sisters who knew better began saying
that the Black question and the question of w^omen were not related.
Proposals from Black women urging fights against segicgation w^ere dismissed
as "'outside issues,” The pact between wdiite supremacy in the South and
suffrage for women w^as sealed in 1903 on the issue of states’ rights, when a
Women’s Suffrage (Convention decided that locals could decide on all policy
questions of membership. This insured that many suffrage associations were
segregated.

By 1913, at the March on Washington for Suifrage, Ida Wells
Barnett was asked not to march in the Illinois delegation, and at the final
hour, six thousand Black women who applied for membership in the
National Association of Women’s Suffrage were told to wait because suffrage
was imminent.

While many other women activists were involved in the militant
social movements of the day, linking the oppression of women to a class
analysis of US society, the suffrage movemcnl bc(;amc trapped in a more and
more narrow fight for the vote. The victory, when it came, was rendered
hollow^ by the compromises with white supremacy that liad been made along
the w^av.

This is a familiar pattern in US radical history. Most US radicals
traditionally downplayed the Black revolution, '"Problems of race” were seen
as secondary to the “real” class slruggie of while workers. One of the earliest
unions, the INationaJ Labor Union, refused to organize Black workers,
Eugene V, Debs’ American Railway U'niort barred Black people from
membership. The Socialist Party had segregated parly cells in the South,
Racism in the US labor movement was seldom challenged by the left,

A test for all opposition movements came w ith the onset of World
War L The First World War was a fight of rival imperialist powers for
colonies, investments, raw mateiials and world hegemony. Millions of people
died while the different governments experimented with germ warfare and
tested out new^ weapons systems. Although most of the Socialist parties in
the Second International supported their own governments in the war,
there were major revolts against the war by workers, soldiers and poor
people. The Third International w^as formed by Leiiin in 1919 in opposition
to the national chauvinism of the organized parties of the time. In the US,
many individual WobbUes actively opposed the w^n, although the IWW did
not take an active anli-w^ar stance, Eugene V, Debs and other left-wing
socialists, William Z, Foster and other labor organizers, Jane Addarns,
Jeannette Rankin and other w^omen activists, all opposed the war.

The greatei^t event of the war years, as far as oppressed people were
concerned , was the \actory of the Russian Revolution in 1917,
Establishment of the world's first socialist revolution sent weaves of energy
thru radical movements around the world. The IWW supported the
Bolsheviks, So did Seattle AFL longshoremen, who refused to load machine
guns headed for the US anti-Bolshevik expeditionary force in Siberia, It was
in this period that the Socialist Party split and the Communist Party formed.

The example of the Bolshevik Revolulion was powerful —and the
capitalist fear of revolution was equally strong. The US government launched
a major campaign to crush the US left forces.

The Wobblies came under intensive state attack. Organizers in
Chicago were rounded up in 191 8, thrown into Cook County Jail to await a
conspiracy trial which then went on for months, Frank Little, a Native
American and prominent Wobbly organizer was lynched in Butte, Montana
in 1917 for his opposition to World War 1, He and Joe Hill, legally lynched
by the slate of Utah in 1915, w^ere martyrs in the Wobbly cause. The Palmer
Raids hit in 1920, J, Edgar Hoover headed the ''radical squad'' in the Justice
Department and made his rcputaliou thru llicse raids. Ten thousand people
were rounded up and thrown in jaiU Some were tortured, many like Emma
Goldman were deported. The government whipped up anti-red and
anti-immigrant hysteria —a climate which led to the frame-up and murder of
Sacco and Vanzetti a fe\v years later.

The Wobblies w^ere finally crushed. Beset hy internal division and
lack of effective organization, they w^erc unable to deal with the smashing
force of state repression. Some of their great leaders, like Big Bill Haywood,
were forced into exile,

Gompers and the AFL leadership joined in the anti-Bolshevik
campaign. They became the mouthpiece for the rulers, the labor w^edge in
the onslaught against US leftists. “Americanisin'’ was once again the
watchword —the enemy was the immigrant, the Black, the Mexican, the
militant w^oman striker —all the forces of opposition. This is similar to
AFL-CIO President George Meany's “patriotic" attacks on the anti-war
movement during the Vietnam War,

Attacks on the left were aimed at defusing the revolutionary
. movement in the wake of the Russian Revolution, and also at ensuring that
US gains made during World War I could be consolidated. With its European
rivals badly haltered from the war, the US tightened its hold on Latin
America and made aggressive moves toward (^hina. The US entered a new era
as a major w^orld power. While opposition continued (Debs drew one million
Votes in the Presidential campaign of 1920), masses of people were mobilized
behind the goal of expanding the empire as the sure way to prosperity,
William Green, who succeeded Gompers as President of the AFL, argued that
strikes were no longer needed, that imperialism would bring the US working
class great economic benefits. This kind of opportunism and national
chauvinism within the US labor movement helped isolate the radical forces.

Parallel to these developments was a marked increase in terror
directed at the Black population. This was reflected in a wave of lynchings,
organized attacks on Black communities, and the rapid growth of the Klan in
the posL-World War I period.

Between 1910 and 1920, over 500,000 Black people had moved

North and begun life in the cities. For years, Northern industries had refused
to hire Black laborers, instead relying on the seemingly endless supply of
cheap immigrant labor. But with European immigration disrupted by the war
—and following on the heels of a severe depression in the cotton industry—
Northern labor agents came South to recruit Black workers.

Thousands of Black workers entered heavy industry. They worked
in auto, steel, ironworks and the railroads —at the toughest jobs, with the
least pay and no job security. This process began the trend, which is still
occurring today, of Black and Third World workers entering basic industry.
This has now markedly changed the racial composition of the working class
in these areas and has brought the Black liberation struggle to the industrial
center of the US.

Black men also joined the segr^ated armed forces. Over a third of
all US troops in Europe were Black. Returning home after the war, they
were often the target of racial attacks —and they fought back. This trend has
continued after every US war, as more and more Black men came home
armed and angry. The cities were tense places, as white mobs assaulted the
just-settling-in Black people. Black communities defended themselves with
arms in Chicago and Washington, D.C. In the Tulsa battle of 1921, the white
mayor ordered an aerial bombardment of the Black section of town. The
tenacity of the Black defenders temporarily turned back the white civilian
attacks.

It was under these conditions of Black people developing new
urban communities and defending them, combined with a race pride and
identification with African anti-colonial struggles, that the Garvey movement
grew strong and a Harlem renaissance of Black music and art flowered.
Marcus Garvey claimed a million members for his Universal Negro
Improvement Association. This movement expressed an upsurge of Black
consciousness of oppression as a colonized people. It also expressed a
well-founded lack of faith in the reliability of white allies. Garvey set up a
steamship company and developed plans for an exodus to Africa. The
collapse of some of these projects combined with state repression of the
UNIA contributed to the organization’s decline. But its spirit lived on, as
evidenced in Black nationalist movements of today.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND THE
COMMUNIST PARTY

The myth that the US economy was somehow headed for
continued prosperity outside the normal laws and cycles of capitalist
development was rudely shattered by the Great Depression which started in
1929. From the US, it rapidly spread to the rest of the capitalist world. Only
the socialist USSR remained untouched.

Production in the US fell to 60% of the previous year. At least
seventeen million people were out of jobs at the worst point —over one third
of the labor force. Piles of food, coffee, grain, beans were burned, dumped in
the ocean, or contaminated with fuel oil, to get them off the glutted market
and raise food prices, while millions went hungry. Small businesses were

ruined; teachers and professors were out on the street; farmers were forced
off their farms. On the breadlines j at the Red Cross offices, at relief centers,
city halls, state capitals, federal offices, the unemployed and the dispossessed
began to fight back.

Veterans marching to Washington, D.C., got beaten, gassed, and
thrown out of the city by troops commanded by General Douglas
MacArthur, on orders from President Herbert Hoover. The Communist
Party, along with the Unemployed Councils, led demonstrations and actions.
When evicted tenants had their furniture dumped on the street by order of
their landlords, members of the Unemployed Councils would organize and
haul the furniture back into the house, often past armed sheriffs and
deputies. The CP began to grow and train the organizers who later helped
establish the CIO. A major campaign for unemployment insurance was
launched, which in a few years led to the creation of the Social Security
System.

As industry began to recover, some workers were rehired, the
unemployed and students began to get jobs. Communists and other militant
organizers began a drive to transform the existing company unions in the
basic industries into real weapons of class struggle. Auto, steel, meat-packing,
maritime trades, lumber, food-processing, were major targets.

This became the period of sit-down strikes and other direct action
innovations* In Toledo, Ohio, workers and the unemployed together violated
a ban on mass picketing during the 1934 strike at Autolite. The 1934 West
Coast Maritime Workers' strike united several craft unions in defiance of
conservative AFL leaders* The police murder of two San Francisco strikers
during the first days of the strike touched off bloody battles in the city, and
resulted in the San Francisco general strike.

Black people were hit hardest by the depression. Between the start
of the depression and the onset of World War II, Blacks lost one third of
their jobs in industry, and most of their positions in the skilled trades. In
1940, unemployment rates for northern Black people w^ere 133% higher than
for whites. In 1935, Black people in Harlem boycotted stores which refused
to hire Black workers. Their slogan was ^‘Don't Buy, If You Can't Work."
This campaign led to a rebellion in Harlem in the summer of 1935 after a
Black youth was shot by store detectives in one of the affected stores.

In the South, Black sharecroppers engaged in major struggles some
of them jointly with poor white farmers. The Alabama Sharecroppers Union
helped organize the first series of protests against the Scottsboro Case, the
frameup of nine Southern Black men accused of raping two white women.
Meetings of the Sharecropper’s Union had to be kept secret, for fear of
police terror. Ralph Gray, a Black leader of the group, was Ivnched by a
white mob during one of the sharecroppers struggles. The sharecropper
movement was the most significant upsurge in Black action and protest in
the South since Reconstruction days.

This was the era of the unorganized and unskilled —those w'orkers
long excluded from the labor movement. Many of the striker^ were w omen;
many were Black. Few were organized into AFL unions. The Congress of
Industrial Organizations (CIO), led by John L. Lewis, was formed in 1935,
for the purpose of “organizing the unorganized" in the major industries.
Communists were at the core of the CIO drives. They wer- ^eat union
organizers, and Lewis was realistic enough to rely on them t o crack the
toughest anti-union strongholds.

In the next few years, the CIO campaigns won basic rights for
millions of workers. The CIO opened up its membership to Black people,
breaking the “whites only” practice of most AFL craft unions, 200,000
Black workers joined the CIO in the years preceding World War IL This was a
time of great unity and militancy, of life and death battles for the right to
organize and picket, for union recognition, decent pay, decent working
conditions, human dignity. The AFL hierarchy was pushed aside as the
masses of L S workers took centerstage.

In 1936, workers at the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan,
staged a forty-four day sitdown strike. This forced GM to grant union
rec^ognilion and also galvanized the working class throughout the nation, A
maj<ir victory was also won in 1937 in the fight to organize the steel
industry.

By the end of the Second World War, the CIO no longer played this
revolulionary role. Many CIO unions had enforced no-strike pledges against
their membership during the war; many CIO leaders, like Sidney Hillman of
the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, were functioning almost within the
Roosevelt administration. The CIO also had a Southern organizing
eomniittee, but never organized in the South, It backed off from the task of
confronting white supremacy in Southern industry and accepted the
formation of Jim Crow unions.

Reflecting their own acceptance of the privileges and ethic of the
US empire, especially during the period of the World War II economic boom,
and pushed by state pressure and conservative leadership, many labor unions
lined up behind anti-Coinmunism, At the 1946 CIO convention, Phillip
Murray —the President of the CIO— put the finishing touches on this
corruption by reading Communists out of the labor movement. Communists
and left Ted unions were expelled from the CIO and finally the CIO merged
with the AFL, The AFL-GIO became an ardent defender of the Cold War,
and its national leadership now functions, for all intents and purposes, as an
arm of US imperialism* They no longer represent the unorganized, the poor
and the dispossessed,

Roosevelt granted some concessions to the labor movement in
order to save the system as a whole. The Wagner Act of 1 935 recognized the
rights of most workers to unionize* This was a victory, although the act left
out the militant Chicane farmworkers in the West, as well as most industries
employing large numbers of women, RoosevelUs aim was to use the power of
the labor movement as a wedge in convincing a sector of the ruling class that
state regulation of the capitalist system was needed to ensure stability,
Roosevelt also tried to ally with the labor leadership and bring it under the
wing of the US government* These were the strategic goals of the New Deal,

From the depression years until after the Second World War, the
CPUSA was the main force of the organized left in the United States* The CP
was in the front lines of countless struggles of the unemployed, the
homeless, Southern Black sharecroppers, women textile workers —groups hit
hardest and most ready to fight* Around the CP flourished a cultural
Upheaval: writers, painters, poets were mobilized into struggle and produced
a unique people's art*

The CP stressed the special importance of Black liberation. Black
people were recognized as an oppressed nation in the South (then called a

Negro nation) with the right of self-determination, which white
revolutionaries were bound to support* This was a great breakthrough*
Communists engaged in persistent battles against white chauvinism and white
supremacy both within and outside the Party, CP organizers challenged
racism in the labor movement. The CP did active work in the Scottsboro
Case, making it a central part of Parly work in the shops as well as in the
defense committees. Many Black people joined the Party in this period: the
Harlem branch was one of the biggest and most active; Black organizers were
among the most effective CP spokespeople*

Communists circulated work of Black scholars and did important
historical research themselves which uncovered Black and revolutionary
history, this was like a flash of light. They failed, however, to analyze the
culture of US empire-building within the oppressor nation, or to deal with it
in practice. This became a cause of the CP’s eventual political bankruptcy.

In a great demonstration of international solidarity, Communists
joined the fight against fascism in Spain in 1935 —nearly 2,000 people
fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade there, and many gave their lives.

The center of the world struggle at this time was the battle to
defeat fascism. But the US government, along with those of Britain and
France, wanted Hitler to attack the Soviet Union and hopefully destroy it
before they would enter the war against Germany. The Western imperidist
powers had long isolated the Soviet Union, setting her up for ?^azi attack. In
1936, Communist Parties around the world adopted the strategy of a United
Front Against Fascism, Communists everywhere were urged to unite with all
progressive forces in their respective countries to defeat fascism and protect
the Soviet Union.

In some countries like China, the United Front strategy was applied
effectively, with the Chinese Communists maintaining their own separate
identity, program and army. In the US, the CPUSA .submerged its identity
within the CIO. It fought for economic gains, but did not keep alive a vision
of socialism and revolution. It stopped fighting its own imperialism. This is
opportunism. While concealment from union officials and company spies
was sometimes necessary in order to work and organize. Party members
retreated from doing open Communist organizing in their day-to-day work.

This made it easier fur the CIO to denounce “hidden communists^’ in the
witchhunts after the war.

In 1941^ when A. Phillip Randolph organized a march on
Washin^on for more Black jobs, the CP refused support in the name of the
war mobilization effort. This was correctly viewed as desertion by Black
people*

During the Second World War^ the US and the Soviet Union were
allied in the fight against German and Japanese imperialism. This presented a
complex situation for the CPUS A. Its response was to abandon almost all its
opposition to US imperialism. It failed* for instance, to condemn the
imprisonment of Japanese families in concentration camps onthe West Coast-
It abandoned its position on the central nature of the Black liberation
struggle —with Earl Browder (the wartime leader of the Party) declaring that
Black people had chosen the path of integration. This was part of the CP’s
betrayal of its revolutionary critique of imperialism: a new version of
American exceptionalism* Browder also declared that “the Age of
Imperialism has ended” in a speech at the end of W^orld War IL

After the war, these CP policies were reversed for a while, Browder
was expelled from the Party* But the changes did not last. When Cold War
repression came, the CP found that its non-struggle direction could not be
reversed easily* The CP had lost its capacity to fight* Tens of thousands of
supporters and Party members deserted the struggle*

The CP retreated further into reform politics* It joined in the Soviet
denunciations of China, renounced revolutionary violence and began
supporting libera! Democrats,

It still has not done a full self-criticism of these positions or of the
mistakes of the forties and fifties. This means the CP has not changed in a
revolutionary way and the Icsssons of struggle have not been passed on for
the future.

We have much to learn from the experience and wisdom
accumulated over the years by CP workers of that period. The CP in its early
history was a great advance in tlie US revolution. Its reversals and wrong
directions are defeats for us all —that is why the lessons must be drawn
sharply*

In the fifties the CP was hit head-on with a vicious campaign of
anti-communism and counter-revolution. Truman was consolidating a base
for imperial war, for a massive atomic arms race, for the invasion of Korea
-by hunting and terrorizing I S Communists. It was then that Richard Nixon
began his political/criminal career wth the Alger Hiss case. Smith Act trials
jailed the Party leadership; for not cooperating v^dth the McCarthy
investigations many Communists and progressives were expelled from trade
unions, lost teaching jobs, went underground, and were tormented by the
FBI*

A bitter example of the US attack on internal opposition to the
Cold W'ar was the frameup and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in
the Atom Spy case. Their murder, at the hands of the Eisenhower /Nixon
government, was committed after a trial in which their socialist beliefs,
anti-fascist stands, and refusal to falsely inform on friends were used as proof
of conspiracy to steal the non-existent “A-bomb secret*” Hundreds of
thousands of people around the world stood vigil on the night of the
execution. The assassination of the Rosenbergs was meant to silence all

7 *^

opposition to US imperialism,

TKe truth about the Rosenhergs is just today being understood
—another step on the long march toM-ard exposing ihe crimes of this empire
and uncovering the truth about our own past*

I I When you deal with the past, you’re dealing with history, |
you’re dealing actually with the origin of a thing. When you
I ! know the origin, you know the cause. If you don’t know the
I origin, you don’t know the cause. And if you don’t know the
cause, you don’t know the reason, you’re just cut off, you’re
left standing in mid-air. So the past deals with history or the
origin of anything —the origin of a person, the origin of a
j nation, the ori^ of an incident. And when you Imow the
^ origin, then you have a better understanding of the causes
I that produce whatever originated there and its reason for
I originating and its reason for being. It’s impossible for you
' and me to have a balanced mind in this society without going
I into the past, because in this particular society as we function
I and fit into it right now, we’re such an underdog, we’re
I trampled upon, we’re looked on as almost nothing.

Malcolm X

We will simply say that imperialism can be defined as the
worldwide expression of the se^ch for profits and the
ever-increasing accumulation of surplus value by monopoly
financial capital^ centered in Europe, and then in North
America. And if we wish to place the fact of imperialism
within the general trajectory of the evolution of the
transcendental far-ranging factor which has changed the face
of the world —capital and the process of its accumulation—
we can say that imperialism is piracy transplanted from the
seas to dry land, piracy reorganized, consolidated, and
adapted to the aim of exploiting the natural and human
resources of our peoples. But if we can calmly analyze the
imperialist phenomenon, we will not shock anybody by
admitting that imperialism —which everything points to as
being the last stage of capitalism —was a historical necessity,
a consequence of the development of the productive forces
and of the transformation of the methods of production in
the general contour of humanity as a whole in movement, A
necessity, just as the national liberation of the peoples, the
destruction of capitalism, and the arrival of socialism are at
present,

Amilcar Cabral

IV. IMPERIALISM IN CRISIS:
THE THIRD WORLD

US imperialism is the greatest destroyer of human life on earth. It is
i whole: an economic, political, and cultural system. It feeds on piracy of
Third World. It colonizes Black and Third World people within the US
ind divides, exploits, rapes and attempts to buy off poor and working
people. Because of imperialism people live in shanty-towns in Saigon and Rio
-■e Janeiro* The same system is responsible for the sub-standard conditions
:f one quarter of the housing in this country, US imperialism is a parasite on
the Third World, and traps us in a culture of waste and death* For the
i^enefit of imperialism we live in a society either at war or producing and
preparing for war all the time.

Imperialism has its origin in the necessity for capitalism to expand
:r face stagnation. Imperialism is therefore the defining characteristic of
modern capitalism as a whole. Its penetration into the ''fhird World produces
‘he conditions which give rise to movements for national liberation and
socialism* It is precisely because this expansion is necessary that national
-iberation movements are a vital blow to imperialism.

Imperialism is on the defensive today. Wherever people reclaim
lontrol over their lives and their nation's wealth, it removes another brick
rrom imperialism's foundation.

MONOPOLY CAPITAL

US imperialism is a stage in the development of capitalism -the
monopoly stage.

Long before the present age of monopoly, capitalism was born out
of the trade and commerce and empire building of the medieval world. The
industrial revolutions of Europe and North America had their roots in the
subjugation and looting of Africa, India, and the Americas.

In the US the end of the Civil War began a tremendous boom in
industry in the North, The years between 1880 and 1900 —in Britain,
France, and Germany as wed as here — marked the transition from
Competitive capitalism to the concentration of industry and finance in the
hands of a few financiers and huge industrial corporations. By the turn of
the century, the most basic industries were monopolized —energy, railroads,
machinery, steel. The power of the banks and financiers grew to finance
modernization and expansion.

The capitalist countries fought for control of the world in a series
of long and costly colonial wars. The people of Africa, Asia and Latin
America resisted. But eventually, skillful manipulations of divisions among
the people, combined with the battleships and machine-guns of the industrial
nations, prevailed over the colonies. Africa was divided up among the
European countries in 1886; in Asia, France controlled Indochina while the
European powers tried to divide up China; England dominated the
subcontinent of India. The US, having already seized North America from
the Indians and Mexico, and staked out its claim to Latin America in the
Monroe Doctrine, proceeded to ^ab Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines
from the weakened Spanish empire, began frequent military interventions
into Latin America and attempted to penetrate China thru the Open Door
policy.

The laws of capitalist competition, expand or perish, did not cease
to operate with the triumph of monopolistic finance capital. Actually the
competition was reproduced on a bigger scale and at a much greater level of
tension and conflict. Modern arms and technology, thought-control and
social engineering, try to disguise the facts of oppression behind the mask of
neo-colonialism. Nevertheless, conquest and domination have become more
devastating, and even more enormously profitable.

What causes this drive for colonial conquest and empire ?

—Large companies are more efficient in exploiting labor because
they are able to use their great accumulation of capital in developing
technology. This leads to producing much more than c.an be sold
domestically at a profit, since the workers can never be paid enough to buy
back the product of their labor. This “crisis of overproduction*’ is inherent
to capitalism at all stages, but intensified under monopoly capitalism. New
markets must be found and new areas for investment of idle capital.

—Colonized nations hold the promise of labor at starvation wages,
unorganized and easily available. The monopolist goes in search of new
sources of cheap raw materials in the Third World.

—The profits of monopoly capital are so enormous that the supply
of capital outstrips the profitable investment opportunities in the US. This

capital is invested in other capitalist countries, but most profitable are
investments in colonies* Whole factories and branches of industry are now
exported to the Third World*

-A by-product of the huge profits reaped from the Third World is
the strategy (and ability) to create labor peace domestically by buying off a
privileged strata of the US working people, reaching even into large sectors
of the industrial proletariat*

By the 20th century, capitalism had reached the stage of modern
imperialism; since the US is always competing with other imperialist nations
for power, control of the Third World is not only an economic necessity, but
also a political and military necessity*

IMPERIALISM MEANS UNDERDEVELOPMENT

The condition for the massive development of one sector of the
imperialist system —the oppressor nation— is the systematic and violent
Underdevelopment of the other— the colonies and neocolonies of the Third
World, The wealth of one is a product of the impoverishment of the other.
This has involved nothing less than an unparalleled looting of the labor,
resources and cultures of the people of Africa, Asia and Latin America by
the imperial powers*

This begins with the very first expansions of early capitalism. For
example, when the British entered India in force, the primitive textile
industry of each country was at a similar stage of development. The British
deliberately wrecked the Indian textile industry to force India to import
British textiles* Vast amounts of Indian feudal wealth were stoienm order to
provide what Marx called the “primitive accumulation of capital” in

England. Indian food agriculture was destroyed to make way for cash crops
and raw materials needed for British industry. By the late 18th century, the
result was the first mass famine in India, In England, the imperialists justified
their rule as necessary to care for the ^'backward and ignorant” Indians.
Rudyard Kipling and other imperial writers built elaborate justifications for
British Empire which rallied generations of English people.

In Cuba, when the people lived under US neocolonial control, the
entire life of the island was based on the sugar plantation system. People
worked three months and spent nine months unemployed. No other
industries were allowed to develop. This gave the sugar companies a ready
supply of cheap labor, since the alternative for the Cuban worker was no
work at all.

The most modern form of forced underdevelopment can be seen in
the workings of the multinational corporations in the Third World.

The rise of the multinationals can be traced, in large part, to the
post World War II growth of US empire. Over 200 US-based corporations
could now be characterized as multinationals —that is, major corporations
having headquarters in one country and a number of subsidiaries in other
Countries.

The multinationals have attempted to cultivate a liberal image. The
Polaroid Corporation, for example, has defended its heavy investments in
South African apartheid as the “Polaroid experiment.” Polaroid claims that
it pays higher wages to South African workers than local South African
industry does. But this hides the crucial point: while the multinationals, with
their enormous amount of capital, research and development facilities and
highly-organized sales apparatus, can pay workers a bit more, the profits
they extract from this labor are even more staggering. Salvadore AUende
pointed this out in his December, 1972 speech before the U.N. Describing
workings of the two US-based multinational companies. Anaconda and
Kennecott, he said:

These enterprises exploited Chile’s coppor for many years; in
the last 42 years alone taking out more than $4,000 million
in profits idthough their initial investments were no more
than $ 30 million. In striking contrast, let me give one simple
and painful example of what this means to Chile. In my
country there are 600,000 children who will never be able to
enjoy life in a normal, human way because during the first
eight months of life they did not receive the minimum
amount of protein. Four thousand million dollars would
eompletelytransform Chile. A small part of that sum would
ensure protein for all time for all children of my country.

By controlling the copprar industry, Kennecott and Anaconda were
able to determine how much copper would be mined and what price it
would be sold for. Since copper exports account for 80% of the total value
of Chilean exports, these multinationals had the Chilean economy in their
greedy grasp.

The multinationals would sell raw copper to their subsidiaries

in the US well below the world market price; in return, these subsidiaries
would smelt the copper ore and sell the refined product at the going market
price. Profits were thus maximized in the US —and minimized in Chile,.
Before the Popular Unity government nationalized the copper mines in
1971, no Chilean government could even raise the taxes on these
corporations, let alone influence their production policies. Any attempts in
this direction were met by Kennecott and Anaconda with cutbacks in
production and wholesale layoffs of copper workers.

At Llie same time, the multinationals were able to pay Chilean
copper workers higher wages than most other Chilean industries. They used
this to attempt to create a labor aristocracy in Chile, a force to oppose the
interests of other Chilean workers. AFL-CIO organizers were sent in by the
US to help organize anti-communist unions.

Some of the methods by which imperialism creates
underdevelopment in the Third World can be summarized as follows:

—The labor of Third World people has been stolen through slavery,
super-exploited at low wages, and channeled into production meant to
benefit the oppressor nation* Profits are drained from the Third World,
Where reinvestment takes place mthin the oppressed nation, the priorities of
the corporate powers determine where it will go,

—The natural resources and raw materials of Third World countries
have been expropriated by the imperialist powers, particularly the US, The
recent actions of the oil-producing countries and the copper -producing
countries are important attempts by Third World nations to wrest back
control of these resources, and with them, of their own destinies,

—Diversification of industry, real progress and rational economic
grovrth are prevented by imperialism* Where industrialization is allowed to
occur, consol remains firmly in imperialist hands and, most often,
consumer-oriented industries are pushed rather than agriculture or heavy
industry. This keeps the '‘developing” country dependent on imperialist
technology and aid.

—Often cash crops —like sugar and coffee— are cultivated at the
expense of agricultural production which could feed the people. This is a
main cause of famine and malnutrition in the world. Coffee alone is the
primary economic life-blood of ten underdeveloped countries.

This exploitation is maintained only through force and violence.
Corporations like Kennecott,ITT,Polaroid and Exxon rely on state violence to
insure their investments and continued profits.

Most simply, imperialism means super-profits for US corporations
at the expense of human lives and possibilities in the Third World.

IMPERIALISM MEANS RACISM AND GENOCIDE

Imperialism has intensified and spread worldwide the most virulent
racist practices and ideology. Racism is built into US imperialism and
imperial culture feeds on and creates racism. Racism is institutionalized as a
system of control and containment, necessary to enforce the exploitation
and oppression of colonized people. In the Third World, racism takes the
form of cultural warfare, the displacement of populations and genocide.

Imperialism perpetrates a mythology of biological and cultural
inferiority. As W.E.B. DuBois describes it:

The white race was pictured as ‘*pure*' and “superior"; the
Black race as dirty, stupid and inevitably inferior; the yellow
race as sharing in deception and cowardice . , , everything
great, everything fine, everything really successful in human
culture was white.

Imperial control aims at the thorough domination and humiliation
of the subjugated. Ruthless suppression of the oppressed has as its other side
the practice of treating colonized women and men as children, attacking
their integrity and dignity, enforcing dependency with the underlying threat
of superior force.

Imperialism systematically subverts peoples’ history and culture
—social forms, language, art, respect for old people— everything that
identifies a person in society. As with the economy, imperialist penetration
cuts off the growth of the culture. It distorts the historical development of
the oppressed people. The old culture is used to imprison the people and
adapt them to imperialism’s needs. As Fanon points out, the goal is rather a
continued agony than the total disappearance of the pre-existing cultures.

The displacement of whole populations is another racist weapon of
imperialism. The Bantustans of South Africa, for example, comprising! 3% of
South African territory, are “reserved" for the African population w'ho are
uprooted and forcibly removed to these poor quality lands. This is enforced
by a rigid Polaroid-provided I.D, pass system. The Bantustans are guarded by
white South African troops. From them, African men are recruited as a labor
pool for the mines and factories, while women are forced into prostitution in
order to survive.

Another example of ^hc violent displacement of a whole population
is the complele desU-uction by automated war of the society of Lao people
in the Plain of Jars. Every day for five years the US carried out secret air war
to destroy the social and economic infrasd'ucture of areas governed by the
Pathet Tiao, The people of the Plaii\ of Jars -with a 700-year recorded
history-^ retreated to caves and dugoul tunnels as hamlets were razed and
the land made barren. Finally, under massive attack, the youth of the Plain
retreated vvith the Pathet l^ao and the remaining people were forcibly placed
in refugee camps or airKfied to Vientiane to become peddlers, waitresses,
maids and coolies* Prom 1964 io 1969 over one million Laotians were IdDed,
wounded c^r made homeless by an officially denied air war.

The final weapon of racist warfare is genocide: the systematic
destruction of a people, their means of subsistence and future generations.
Today, the native Indian people of Brazil are being decimated by US
industry and Brazilian government expansion into the Amazon basin regions*
These tribal people arc forced off their land, killed by raids and whiteman's
diseases, and pacified by government programs, their cultures destroyed. It
has been charged that 100,000 Indians are being eliminated* The US
government used genocidal weapons against the people of Vietnam: chemical
and biologicaf substances it had agreed to outlaw, which burn the flesh,
cripple future generations, and obliterate growth on the land. This was
intended to break the Vietnamese and to be an example to other oppressed
people*

Even in the face of this terrible suffering the people resist. The
culture of the colonized people sur\ives reservations, epidemics, air war,
near -genocide. The culture changes, takes on new forms to meet the changed
conditions, as Black people transformed the church into a unifying center
during slavery. Colonialism is not able to destroy the strong basis of the
national culture* The people themselves embody it, preserve it, carry it and
hand it down through gencralions. Imperialism encourages the rejection of
the national culture and adoption of the garb and forms of the imperial
culture. The neocotonial bourgcoisc which is created by imperialism often
''paces’’ into the culture of the imperialists. But Lhe people's culture does
not die out* It lies hidden in secret practices and in the memory of the
people until the opportunity and necessily for struggle calls it into life. In
the people’s culture lie the seeds of resistance a?id rebcilion.

Movements for national liberation ai'e often born udth a popular
rejection of imperial culture and a renaissant^e of culture of the colonized
peoples: the culture contains the basis on which unity is built. The
movement to reclaim and take pride in national culture gives \ilality, spirit
and fierceness to the political movement- This is a rejection and defeat of the
racist tactics of imperialism.

Racism is imperialism's niosL deadly %vcapon for brainwashing,
controlling and mobilizing the US population in support of w^s of
conquest. As Fanon says, “Racism bloats and disfigures the face of the
culture that practices it," The imperiaHsts create racial identification with
one's oppressors among the domestic white population in support of wars of
conquest. They also draw on xenophobia and national chauvinism.

Racism is the chief justification for US expansion and colonial
ventures. The imperial army has been rallied with vile epithets since “the
only good Indian is a dead Indian" and led into conquest by men like Teddy

Roosevelt who boasted of “killing rabbits" in the war against Puerto Rico in
1898. Racism is at the root of LS unconcern about the indiscriminate
murder of civilians that is the horrible face of the war in Indochina. To
William Galley and the perpetrators of the My Lai war crimes the unarmed
Vietnamese villagers including the children ^vel■e the faceless and nonhuman
“enemy."

IMPERIALISM MEANS SEXISM

The systematic domination of women is an underpinning of
imperialism: under imperialism, the organization and fabric of society —the
family, production, reproduction, and all social relations— keep women
dependent and powerless. Sexism is this institutionalized and encouraged
system of control. In the Third World, imperialism imposes the most brutal
forms of modern sexism. Women are murdered/tortured, sterilized/raped,
stifled/ crippled, owned/exploited under the banner of male supremacy.

Imperialism fosters the most reactionary (backward) aspects in
feudal and colonized nations, including male supremacy. The more humane
aspects are suppressed. Thus, for women in the Thii’d World, the most
oppressive aspects of both imperialism and the former society are fused and
intensified. Imperialism maintains and iieightens the oppression of women
on a global scale,

Imperiabsm lays claim to all the naturaS resources of the colonized
society, including the women. They are valued and controlled as laborers,
breeders, and sexual commodities.

Women are cut from the economic lifeline. Where imperialism
causes rapid and forced urbanization, women are uprooted into unfamiliar
cities where there is no economic activity for them -forced to be dependent
on men. Sex segregation in the work force is encouraged by the imperialists.
For example, in Africa, the European colonizers taught and recruited only
men to use technology and to work in thuir factories. Women were excluded
from the “modern economy.” If the woman is left behind to do field labor
or work on a coffee or rubber plantation, she Is also kept at the edge of
subsistence, subject to an economy based on imperial needs and disruptions,
where the traditional agriculture has been destroyed.

The reproductive power of Third W'trrid women is under direct
attack by the imperialists. Population control and forced sterilization is now
a major US strategy directed against Third W'orid people. These massive
programs are intended to prevent social upheaval by restricting population in
the underdeveloped world. They have disarmed many'' because these
programs masquerade as concern for the poor peoples of the world —just like
foreign aid and military protection.

Who is behind these programs? “Family platinirsg" for Third World
women is being pushed by Rockefeller, the Ford Foundation, Kissinger,
International Planned Parenthood Foundation, iftotestant missionaries, and
academic apologists. US agencies in the Third World have made sterilization
and forced birth control programs a requirement for receiving foreign aid

money* These programs concentrate in Latin America, parts of Africa and
India and Indonesia, By 1965, 34% of all women of child-bearing age in
Puerto Rico had been sterilized* Sterilization and IL'Ds are carried to the
villages of Bolivia, Guatemala and Haiti. Women are offered a lipstick or
$1*50 to be sterilized* Population control has its counterparts within the US:
Third W^orld women in particular are sterilized without their consent.

This is not the first time imperialist strategy aimed at the control of
reproduction* In 1945, Congress almost passed a bill to sterilize all the
Japanese women in concentration camps within the US* This motion was
defeated by one vote.

The same men wdio are responsible for US policy in Vietnam say
that overpopulation creates social unrest and revolution* They claim that
population control is their strategy for hunger* But such a strategy will
eliminate neither hunger nor social unrest and revolution. People are not the
problem. Injustice, the conditions caused by US imperialism, create
revolution. So does the lack of power over our hves and the future of our
children*

Women want decent birth control. Women want the choice to
control our own reproduction. Instead, birth control has become a w eapon
of empire —Third World women are used as guinea-pigs for testing and
experimentation. Instead, we get coils and pills and sterilizations under
threat of losing aid or a few crumbs of welfare. This kind of coercion, for
economic and racist reasons, constitutes forced sterilization* It is a direcl
form of genocide against the future, through the bodies of women.

Imperialism enforces a systematic terror against women* The
staggering number of rapes of Vietnamese women of all ages by US soldiers,
taken together, draws a picture of the intimate relationship of \TOlence and
sex under imperialism, Rape and sexual abuse is the prerogative of the
conqueror, a means of undermining women ^s resistance, a murderous assault,
part of the arsenal of control and domination. The rape of Black slave
women is one of this country’s major crimes* White men claimed tlie right to
rape Black women, and any attempt to defend a Black woman meant death
by the lynch rope. Signs of a deep love relationship between slaves led to one
of them being sold; mothers and children w^ere systematically separated*

The invader attempts to “possess” and degrade the colonized
woman and, thru her, to assault the entire culture. Wherever US imperialism
goes, its tourism and its armies produce mass prostitution; Havana
{pre-1959), Manila, Saigon, Bangkok, San Juan, Women are used as sexual
objects and discarded. There are nearly 500,000 women in prostitution in
South Vietman, leading masses of women to drugs and suicide. There arc
more brothels than schools. In 1969, there were 214 agencies which
recruited young w^omen from the provinces for 21,000 brothels, bars, and
hoteb. Operations to conform Vietnamese women to American standards of
beauty became big business — w^omen’s breasts were enlarged and their eyes
rounded.

In US -built prisons in the Third World, women are tortured wiih
the special metiiods developed by the CIA, AID, and the International
Association of Chiefs of Police, There are over 100,000 women in South
Vietnamese prisons, thousands in Brazil and Uruguay, They are tortured by
electric shock, beatings, drugs and sexual violence.

Women have begun to transform their lives by participation in

nano ■ Id 1 norral son inovnnr ant.- throughou!. [he. I'hirO Work]. [ri &^trikin^
oppO'iihon lo thnir L;nrniiiH>ns umier inipariai an^l raachonary socieiias.
woniari ara ovor[ ia’c 'i'- io;r [Urk uppia'.'r.^ors and CTaatijig ruriditionH of djgnitv,
aqi.iality and j.oi.Uy, nave ijei.ajrrtc organ szers, heroines, and leaders in

iiberai.ion sliaiggles . , . Mod ii rider .sociaii^aro Ttiev are organ tiie masses
oj v^oriiei 3 jj ; L nere vvnj i.ries. j hey au'c: op prising backward superstitions,
paOaaradial farnlly re 'a [ ionsiiips. poi)garny; fniimd feet, and traditions basi'-d
on tiu^ inl(a’iorily ol onien. \\ omen are armed, fighting imperialism,
bn-jiding long-haired armies and woimenk militias, defending the new
ssM.ae Lies iney -e'C^ nc i pmg to lunid . 1 hey me working, iearnintr to read,
organizing iieallii ears aiad ehdd rare. I’hey are imf dementing new marriage
and d.!voree iio^s arhi p.ractu'ies arnnnd birth enrdrol he.neficiai to all wmmen.

s&- :;r .

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iRtpoi’hihsm has Us origin in the necessity for capitalism to
e.ypand or face stagnation Imperialism is therefore the
deikdng chaj'aelcrktse of o^oflerrs capitalism as a whole.
penetration into the Third World produces the conditions
which give rise to movements for natioraa^ liberation and
sGCjalisnn .U is precdsdy because this eiipunsion is necessary
that indforuk I i Iteration movent ents ;ire a vital b!ow^ to

Imperialism is on Ihe defensive today. Wherever people
reda.iin conirol over their Jives and their nation’s w^ealth, it
removes another brick from impevird ism’s .foimdationn

Sexism is a cornerstone of imperialism’s power to organize the
population in its home base. Competition, sex and violence are unified by
imperial culture and forged into a weapon against women. In the process of
humUiating and dominating women, men are mobiUzed to be the enforcers.
Sexism, like racism, is pushed to the level of fanaticism to justify an
otherwise naked grab for wealth and pbwer, and to try to ensure the loyalty
of the imperial army. GI’s are promised manhood and glory. Proof of
manhood and sexual prowess is built around the weakness of women. Men
are raUied to kill and not care. An army training cadence goes like this:

J This is my rifle (holding up his Ml 6)

• This is my gun (hand at crotch)

• One is for killing

• The other for fun

Oiar movement must be involved in the figlit against the domination
and torture of our sisters in the Third World. We have a common enemy. The
greatest male supremacists are the leading imperialists. They are Rockefeller,
Moynihan, Kissinger. We cannot betray the stru^le of women in general and
our Third World sisters in particular. When we embrace these struggles as our
own —and merge them with our own— we create a basis for revolutionary
asterhood and an international women’s movement against imperialism.

NEOCOLONIALISM

The IIS has practiced neocolonialism for over 70 years in Latin
America, But in the context of rising Third World nationalism after World
War II, it became the main form of US world control. Neocolonialism
removes the most glaring symbol of the subordination of the colonized, the
colonial government. It grants formal political independence. At the same
time, it attempts to guarantee continued dominance thru economic, military
and cultural penetration.

Neocotonial economies are subordinated to the demands of the
imperialists. By the sheer scale of invested capital, multinational
corporations can mold these economies to fit corporate needs.

Neocolonialism trains and supports a bourgeoisie within the
colonized country —not a capitalist class comparable to the one in the
oppressor nations, but a class in service to and totally dependent on the
imperial force which sustains it. The bastions of traditional strength such as
landlords in Latin America are manipulated and strengthened. Necolonialism
relies on reactionary and militaristic forces as a bulwark against social
demands from the people, and plunges the vast majority into greater
poverty.

S-niflMl

DEFEATS FOR NEOCOLONIALISM

While neocolonialism is a brutal system, it contains inherent
weaknesses and instability* The battles for political independence in the
Third World over the last 25 years have been transforming ones, and have
brought oppressed people a new sense of dignity and power. With
independence came many hopes for a better life -something which
neocolonialism has not provided. These popular measures have in the past
forced elected governments like Goulart in Brazil or Bosch in the
Dominican Republic to break with the various forms of US domination*

The most serious death-blow dealt neocolonialism in Latin America
was the overthrow of the Batista regime in 1959 and the successful Cuban
Revolution* From the landing of the Granma to the Bay of Pigs to the
building and defense of socialism today, Fidel Castro has been the heroic and
wise revolutionary leading the fight. The “first free territory of the
Americas” has been a continuing inspiration to the people of Latin America
and the US*

The Cuban Revolution, the only socialist revolution in our
hemisphere, has grown and consolidated forfifteen years*The revolution has
transformed people’s daily lives, eliminating the scourges of the Latin
American continent: illiteracy, staggering rates of infant mortality and
epidemic diseases, mass hunger and malnutrition, inadequate housing and
unemployment. It has created popular forms of organizing revolutionary
justice, taking care of people’s neighborhoods and communities, and more
recently, building a worker’s movement to deepen mass participation at all
levels of decision-making connected with work. The revolution has launched
an offensive to transform education and culture into powerful revolutionary
tools*

Cuba is a beacon for everyone in its principled and dedicated
support for international revolution; Cuba has made terrific sacrifices to aid
other struggles. Cuba’s heartfelt support for Vietnam is unmatched
anywhere. In Cuba, the whole people mobilized to produce for the
Vietnamese, and volunteered to go and fight if needed. Cuba’s unwavering
defiance of Yanqui imperialism has encouraged other Latin American
nations to confront US neocolonia) policy and has been exemplary for other
Latin American movements of national liberaiion. US revolutionaries have a
special responsibility to defend the Cuban Revolution and recognize its
decisive importance to the revolutionary struggle in the Americas. We
support the Cuban Revolution,

The US response to any challenge to its rule has always been savage.
In 1961 , the imperialist Bay of Pigs invasion was turned back by the Cuban
people, but the US has never ceased in its attemtps to arm and build a
para-inilitary force to hurl against Cuba. The US-enforced blockade around
Cuba as well as the boycott of Cuban sugar are the major attempts to
destroy the revolution thru economic aggression which must be opposed and
defeated by our movement. Repeated US-backed plots to assassinate Premier
Fidel Castro by the participants and forces involved in W'atergate have been
foiled.

VIOLENT COUNTERREVOLUTION

Throughout Latin America the old neocolonial facades of
“democratic alternatives’’ to communism have been overthrown, to be
replaced by openly fascist dictatorships; Banzer in Bolivia, Pinochet in Chile,
the junta in Brazil, Bordaberry in Uruguay. These counterrevolutions are the
w'ork of the Nixon -Kissinger Doctrine, The Nixon-Kissinger Doctrine means
the export of fascism to the Third World. Its theme is that the US will arm,
train , finance and support counterrevolution and reaction without
necessarily intervenirig directly wth ground troops in every area in which its
interests are threatened. The price of the Vietnam W^ar was too high to pay
again and again. This strategy has the broad backing of the ruling class and is
not affected by governmental crisis, domestic differences or W'atergate.

Neocolonialism and the Nixon-Kissinger Doctrine are ultimately
based on violence, The US has the most colossal military establishemt the
world has ever seen. Over 3000 bases encircle the globe, B-52’s are always in
the air, and a frightening nuclear arsenal stands ready. There are 600,000 US
troops stationed abroad, even when the US is not engaged in a war. This is
the ultimate threat behind each policy.

The US has been building a strong network of imperialist alliances
linking Western Europe and Japan with a series of fascist governments,
reactionary “junior partners” in imperialism. Thieu, the Greek junta, the
Brazilian dictators, I, on Nol. the Shah of Iran, the governments of Rhodesia
and South Africa are all US-backed regimes, armed against insurgents in their
own countries, set up to police their respective regions. In Africa the US has
increased support to Portugal, in the Mideast the US arms Israel and Jordan,
in Latin America the US and Brazil have backed fascist coups in Bolivia,
Uruguay and now Chile, In no way is neocolonialism a more liberal or
enlightened or peaceful system of domination. Neocolonialism is
Vietnamization on a world-wide scale.

Korea

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1950-1953

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1900

1925

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1926

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ARMED AMERICAN INTERVENTIONS ABROAD 3865— Present

(WQftd Wort or# rtof induded)

INeocolonialisin does not ^^^tiolve the conflicts within impenalism; it
only pushes the struggle to a new stage. To revolutionaries in the Third
World, it has made even clearer the necessity to (iarry the struggle to its final
conclusion-

What does national liberation mean in the world today ?

Amilear Cabral provides a clear formulation:

The liberation struggle is a revolution ... it does not finish at
the moment when the national flag is raised and the national
anthem played* A nation’s national liberation is the recovery
of the historical personality of that nation . . . National
liberation exists when, and only when, the national
productive forces are completely freed of aD kinds of foreign
domination.

Cabral spoke as an African revolutionary who had watched African
independence turn into its opposite under net^olonialisni. He argued that the
immediate enemy of the people of Guinc-Bissau was Portugal, but that the
fight was against neocolonialism as well.

We support progressive nationalist policies or ac'tiori w^hich weaken
the US empire, hkc Peru’s iiatioridlization of the Exxon and Cerro
corporations and the Arab oil boyc'ott. These developinents are in opposition
to imperialism. However, the movements we look to for leadership are those
which fight for the complete freedom of the historical and productive forces
from foreign domination, controlled by and for the masses of the country.

CHANGES IN WORLD POLITICS

Since the eeaselire in Vietnam the center of world conflict is not so
clearly focused. Many contradictions are coming to the fore. The
contradiction between the Soviet Union and China is deepening. We are
studying these issues and offer the following points:

— National liberation movements and the socialist nations of the
Third W'orld are today at the center of world history, providing concrete
leadership and inspiration to the world struggle. They are faced with the
awesome responsibility of consolidating their victories and advancing in the
face of predatory designs of US imperialism. They have the right to full
self-determination; this includes the right to take aid from anyone. They
are the best judges of their own ne.eds and the realities of building socialism.

The Soviet Union has given substantird aid io liberation movements
and to socialist countries like Cuba and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
(DRV), Soviet military aid to the Vietnamese was put to the best possible
use —shooting dowm I-S bomber planes.

It is national chau\inism for US revolutionaries to attack a socialist
country like Cuba for accepting Soviet aid. The same attack has been made
in the past on the DRV. These “left-sounding’' positions display arrogance
toward the struggles of Third World nations.

— The Chinese Revolution is a wonderful development in ihe
advance of humanity. Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist Party have
made many important breakthroughs in developing revolutionary strategy in
the semi-feudal, semi-colonial world. The thought common to Mao and Ho
Chi Minh —that the central revolutionary force of our lime is the oppressed
nations and peoples of the world leading the liberation struggle against
imperialism— is the guiding strategic principle of this era.

The Chinese have followed a popularly-based revolutionary course,
educating and involving hundreds of millions of people in discussion and
decisions about the economic and political direction of their courdry. The
Chinese have also warred on their own bureaucracy. By launching the
Cultural Revolution in 1966, they found a way to combat the rebirth of an
exploitative class in China. The Chinese example of continuing ihe elas.s
struggle within sociahst society has revolutionized people’s vi.sion of ihe
possibilities of socialism.

China, a poor country, has given important political and materisl
assistance to the Vietnamese. In 1950, Chinese volunteers joined the people
of Korea to halt the US invasion. China is now helping Tanzania and Zambia
build the Great Uhuru railroad, a big step in freeing Southern Africa from
dependence on the transport system of the racist governments in R,hodesia
and Mozambique.

—The policy of the government of the USSR, reflected in its
ideological stands as well as its state practice, contains conflicting tendencies.
While aiding many liberation movements, it has , since Krushcfiev’s 20th
Party Congress speech in 1956, put forward the revisionist line that
“peaceful transition to socialism” is the correct path to revolution. This has
been an argument against taking up arms to fight and has forced
revolutionaries around the world, including ourselves, to break sharply with
Communist Parties which adopted this line.

— Nixon and Kissinger have used detente as a public relations device
to mystify the US people about their real intentions. Their rhetoric about
“peace” in the Mideast went hand-in-hand with issuing a worldwide military
alert which horrified people around the globe. Nixon used his trips i.o the
Soviet Union and China, coming at the time of the massive bombardments of
the DRV, to attempt to undermine the. Vietnamese resistance. Nixon’s lack
of success should not obscure his purpose.

Revolutionaries everywhere work for w'orld peace and oppose
nuclear war. This is a question of particular concern to the US movement,
since the US is the only country ever to have used nuclear weapon?.. The
devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a chilling reminder of the Iragic
consequences of nuclear weapons in the hands of the imperialists.

Revolutionaries in the US have as our main enemy US imperialism.
Defeating this enemy wiU require a lot of work —and is the unique
contribution we can make to the world revolution.

-■ ^orld. JA^ i.h^n'iie 'Ihzv y[^^y AA

support eo^iiierre^^oUdivfj ■

dk'iei^Uy wHh ■ :‘Ocy^: '

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bro^i^d L^:^ckiYig of the vuUng k

onsis.. dor?^?:rfitirc ^

of fasscissn to
o;^] 2:ri.\i, train,
without
o every area in
of the "^/ietsiani
fhi^^ ^Ir^-egy has
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v .:ih-r^ate.

ve:!rK>ve?^ niO^X g^f^rsjiig

oorh/VLelio/L the eo!C£iizr:[y tOe coio^iOti-
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h:.roi;'d) aspeet^^
^.-Je r^t.ipremacy,
■:Ui;s for w'omen
oDvr-l.- oi' both
i:od intensified.

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

Let’s look at tiir^e areay which have been major focai points of
world struggle recently: Puerto Rico, Giiine-Bissau and the Palestinian
liberation movement* Eacli is different: they each involve the full complexity
and diversity of the struggle for national liberation.

PUERTO RICO

On December J I * 1 973 * the U *N * General Asee^nbly

overwhelmingly passed tlie report of the IJ*N, Special ('onimittee on
Decolonization* This resolution buries the US claini that It has no colonics*
It reaffirms the 'hnah enable right of the people of Puerto Rico to
self-determination and independence,”

Puerto Rico became a l_iS colony in I898v after )'ears of SoHUiish
rule* Its people liavc proud insJory of j'csrstance —from Ei Grifo de l.ares,
the great 1868 rebellicu agaiost Spain, to the .Mationalist uprisings iji the
1930’s and ]950V, io the presei^t-day resurgence both here and on the
island*

The Puerto Ri -ui people are a divided nation, with aboul
2,700,000 Puerto Riean- living so i'uerto Rico and about 2*000,000 living
the US* This is the residi trf a conscious US strategy: its scheme to
industrialize Puerto R]co in the 1950V was promoted to create a haven for
US corporations seeking cheap lahnr and lax-fr(^c production. This [ed to the
destruction of PuerO> Rjcan agrieidture and the forced migratioti of rnirfiocs.
pushed off the land and (Ufahle to find work in the crowded < ities, Uahed
‘"Operation Bootstiapc' this was the widely-heralded mode! of LS ''aid ' to
the Third World* ll was a cruel attempt to destroy a nation and divide a
people for the benefit of LS corporate profit.

Emigration continues to be encouraged by the LS as a meajis of
defusing Puerto Rican resistance and dealing Vvlth mass unempioy meut on
the island* While lielpiTig to tighten US control, the forced rntgralioii iia- afso
provided a cheap labor supply for low-wage employers in the US* Sixtv
percent of all Puerto Rican workers i?i this country make less ihan SiOO a
week* They work at punishing jobs in the garment and textile indi^i^trics, as
secretaries, in hospitals, dud as migraiit labor on capitabst farms u?idcr the
most inhumane conditions* Low pay goes hamLiii-hand with si agger big
unemployment rates -the permanent condition of the reserve army of iabrw.

Characterized by both special oppression and strategic impoib-ancc*
Puerto Rico has a unique relationship Lo US imperiaiism. Puerto Rico k the
fifth largCvSt market for US goods in the world; over one half of ail US
iiivestmentsiriLaUnAmerica arc there- -a staggering figure ot $6,808,000,000.
Eighty-five percent of Puerto Rico's industrial capital, one of the keys c
country's deveiopmesR, is in the hands of North Americans, San Juan hears
the tell-tale mark of cnipirc —prostitution* hotels* gambling, slums*

Puerto Rico is ihc military center for the US in the Caribbean*
There are two nucl' ar weapons basf‘s and 1 3% of the best a;alde land is
for US militarv purposes. Troops from the island were used in Panama m
1964 and the Doniiuican Republic in 1965. This military presence 3S a

warning to all Puerto Ricans and a threat to the rest of the Caribbean,
particularly sociaOst Cuba.

One of the chief examples of Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship to
the US is the superport: a petrochemical and mineral processing complex
■which US-based multinational oil companies, the Puerto Rican cplonial
government and the Nixon administration are proposing to buQd in Puerto
Rico. The complex is due to be finished over the next 25 years. Its
completion would mean the physical destruction of Puerto Rico as a nation.
More rich agricultural land than ever would be destroyed, and the area
around the plants would become a vast wasteland. The devastation from oil
spills would be incalculable. Estimates are that as many as one million Puerto
Ricans would be forced to leave the country. The attempt to stop the
superporl is a major focus of the Puerto Rican independence movement.

When we look at the importance of Puerto Rico to the US, we can
begin to understand the historic significance of the Puerto Rican movement.
The Puerto Rican nation will not die. It is born again and again thru the
culture and the struggles of the people on the island, and the people here.

Living in the barrios of major cities, mostly on the East Coast,
Puerto Ricans in the US are subjected to many attempts to destroy their
c'diture and their nation. The economic basis of the Puerto Rican community
-Sow-skin jobs and small bodega ownership— is increasingly shaky. Puerto
Ricans face conditions of rotten housing, poor health care, brutal police
treatment and institutionalized racism. Colonialism is at work in the schools,
Puerto Rican children are denied the dignity of their nation’s history and
language, not taught to read, and tracked into useless “general diploma”
programs.

Against this background the Puerto Rican nation re-emerged inside
the US too. In Dec, 1969) the Young Lords took over a church in Spanish
Harlem and inWted “.All New York"" to the People's Church, Puerto Rican
communities were stirring, many fronts were opened up: the struggle for
people’s control of Lincoln Hospital in New Y"ork City, where Blacks and
Puerto Ricans were being abused daily; the ongoing battle for genuine
community control of the schools of District One in New York; the
continuing day-to-day work of groups like El Comite around tenants’ and
welfare rights; the fight to free political prisoners like Martin Sostre, Gabriel
and Francisco Torres, and the Nationalist fighters; the defense of Carlos
Feliciano and Pancho Cruz,

The present-day resistance has its roots in the movements and the
fighters w^ho have come before: in Don Pedro Albizu-Campos, the great
Nationalist leader; in Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irving Flores
and Andres Figueroa Cordero, still in jail after twenty years imprisonment
for the armed atlaek on the US Congress in 1 954; in Oscar Collazo, another
Nationalist fighter who remains in prison for the attempted assassination of
Harry Truman in 1950,

Many forces and organizations now carry on the struggle. The U,N,
resolution was presented by the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) and
the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP), The PSP was invited as an observer to
the recent Non-Aligned Nations Conference in Algiers, The Puerto Rican
movement has continued its armed resistance to US imperialism through the
actions of the Armed Commandos of Liberation (CAL) who have attacked
US-owned companies and the Condado Hotel strip, center of US tourism.
Within the US, MIRA —an armed revolutionary Puerto Rican group— has
attacked many businesses and large stores.

The Puerto Rican movement is a living bond to national liberation
struggles in Latin America, an explosive threat to US power. As it continues
to grow stronger and more forceful^ activists from every movement are
pushed to giveconcretesupport through action and organizing* Learning the
history of Puerto Rico, understanding and supporting the Puerto Rican
movement, and learning to speak Spanish —the people’s language— are all
necessities for movement organizers in the US,

INDEPENDENCE FOR PUERTO RICO I
SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE PUERTO RICAN PEOPLE !
FREE ALL PUERTO RICAN POLITICAL PRISONERS !

STOP THE SUPERPORT I

GUINE-BISSAU

Guine-Bissau is a small country of 800,000 people on the West
coast of Africa* It was from her shores that Portugal initiated thenotorious
West African slave trade over four hundred years ago. Since 1963, a fierce
people’s war has been waged by the forces of the African Party for the
Independence of Guine and the Cape Verde Islands (PAIGC). They have
been fighting and defeating over 35,000 Portuguese troops who have been
armed, supphed and trained by the US and other NATO powers.

On September 24, 1973, Aristides Pereira, Secretary-General of
PAIGC, declared Guine-Bissau independent from Portuguese rule. He
announced that the new Republic of Guine-Bissau would continue to battle
the Portuguese soldiers on its territory and would also press for the
liberation of the Cape Verde Islands. Soon after, the U*N. General Assembly
voted overwhelmingly to extend recognition to the new nation.TheUS, along
with South Africa, Portugal and Israel, opposed the resolution* Eighty-two
nations have now formally recognized the new' government*

Revolution has profoundly changed Guinean life. PAIGC has
liberated almost three-fourths of the countryside* Many people now attend
schools in places where no schools existed before. Health care has become a
priority in a country where only one hospital was built by Porluga! in over
one hundred years. Women have assumed a central role in the revolutionary
process, breaking from the limits and oppression of the colonial past.
Liberation continues to flower in the midst of battle —this is what PAIGC
calls '^building the revolution as we fight.”

Amilcar Cabral was the leader of PAIGC until his assassination by
Portuguese agents in January 1973, Cabral was a powerful, unifying
spokesperson for all the African liberation movements. He was one of the
truly great, original revolutionary theorists of this era, a dedicated fighter in
the cause of liberation. His murder was a cruel blow to Africa and to the
world revolution,

Guine-Bissau is the first Portuguese colony to declare
independence. Its liberation struggle has had an effect in Africa similar to the
worldivide effects of the Vietnamese struggle. It has been a catalyst for the
movements in the other Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique,
and has spurred the rise of revolution throughout Southern Africa, At the
same time, the liberation movements have won more open support from the
Organization of African Unity (OAU), which represents a broad range of
African states*

In Angola, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola
(MPLA) has liberated one third of the land —territory inhabited by one
milbon Angolans, In Mozambique, the guerrillas of the Mozambique
Liberation Front (FRELIMO) have launched a powerful new offensive
against the centers of Portuguese power. FRELIMO forces have crossed the
Zambezi River, the supposedly impenetrable natural defense line of Portugal
in Mozambique. They have challenged PortugaTs planned operation of the
huge Caborra Bassa Dam on the Zambezi River. Combined uith attacks on
the strategic railway between landlocked Rhodesia and the Mozambican port
of Beira, these FRELIMO operations have shaken Portugal’s hold on the
country.

100

Portugal is a poor country, run since 1924 by a fascist dictatorship. It spends
over 50% of its budget on the military and has fielded an army of 250,000
troops to fight in Africa, Like all colonialist and imperialist countries,
Portugal is now seeing the chickens come home to roost. Its attempts to
crush liberation in Africa have created the conditions for rebellion at home.
Over 100,000 youth have fled the country to avoid the draft. Others have
deserted from the army. Armed attacks within Portugal have risen —in April,
a troop ship about to sail from Lisbon to Guine-Bissau with 1,000 men
aboard, was rocked by an explosion. The action w^as claimed by the
Revolutionary Brigade Organization*

The recent military coup in Portugal reflects the success of the
African guerrillas and the deep opposition to the wars among large numbers
of Portuguese, It could be said of the ousted fascist government of Marcello
Gaetano what Cabral said of the death of the previous Portuguese dictator
Salazar: “Africa was the disease which killed him.'" The coup has unleashed a
wave of open anti-fascist organizing among the Portuguese people and has
also triggered intensified popular pressure to end tlie African wars.

It is doubtful, however, that the new junta will agree to the only
possible solution in Africa: complete independence for Angola,
Mozambique, and Guine-Bissau. The junta’s leader. General Antonio Spinola,
fought with the fascists in the Spanish Cnil War, served with the Nazi Army
during World W^ar 11, and was the major Portuguese commander in the losing
war against Guine-Bissau* Spinola has floated out visions of neocolonial
non-solutions which have been categorically rejected by the liberation forces,
Luis Cabral, the new President of the Republic of Guine-Bissau has said:

Spinola talks a lot and he has been known to make a lot of
promises* But we know that the only language he listens to
comes from the guns of our forces, hitting him and hitting
him and hitting him again*

Portugal could not sustainitscolonial wars without the aid of the
Western imperial powers* As' a NATO member it receives arms and supplies
from the US and W^estern Europe* Southern Africa is of great strategic
importance to imperialism —a source of valuable raw materials, cheap labor,
high-profit investments. Victories for PAIGC, FRELIMO, and MPLA could
pose a serious threat to racist rule in the whole area* Consequently, the
battle lines have hardened and the US has more openly supported Portugal
and the white racist governments in South Africa and Rhodesia,

In 1971, the Nixon government gave Portugal a $436 million loan
in return for continued use of the Azores Islands as a military base, US
companies have a growing stake in Portuguese success; they now are the
third largest investors in the Portuguese colonies. Gulf Oil Company pays
Portugal $62 million a year for its rights to oil resources on theAngolan
coast (Cabinda). In November, 1973, Gulf acknowledged the discovery of
new deposits in this area which it called “the most prolific south of the
Middle East.” When the Arab states halted oil shipments to Portugal and
South Africa, Gulf helped take up the slack, sending oil to both countries
and Mozambique.

Over half of all US African invcslment« are in South Africa, which
functioius as a junior partner of Western imperialism. South Africa is
currently fighting liberation movements in Namibia (Southwest Africa).
Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) and within its own borders. As Portugal loses its hold
over Angola and Mozambique, more dheet South African intervention is
likely.

This is the Southern Axis in Africa -Portugal, South Africa, the
US, the NATO powers, Rhodesia - lined up against milhons of Africans
demanding self-determination. The fight I'or liberation in Southern Africa is
i strategic center-point in the battle against imperialism.

The African liberation struggles have been hidden w^ars, rarely
mentioned in the US press, Tt has taken the concerted work of the Black
movement to break the silence in this country, Black organizations have
pushed forward boycott campaigns against Gulf Oil and Portuguese
products, have opposed US support for Portugal and Soutli Africa, and are
now demanding I. S recognition of the new Republic of Guine-Bissau,
Longshoremen in Baton Rouge, Baltimore and San prancisco have refused to
unload shipments of Rhodesian chrome, brought here in violation of a U.N,
ban.

All these activities are important for our movement to support and
help build, Willi the current crisis in Portugal, this is a key time to intensify
worldwide support for the African liberation movements. W'hile some
movement organizers are now^ engaged in work around Africa, many more of
us should make it a pari of our daily work. This involves both commitment
to action and to political education: a good place to begin is with Amilcar
CahraPs writings —Revolution in Guine . Return to the Source . O ur People
arc Our Mountains -- and Basil Davidson's Liberation of Guine. Learn from
the people, A basis can be laid within the movement for a new level of
solidarity with the African struggles.

Gulf Kills

PORTLGAL OIT OF AFRICA!

NO US OK NATO AID TO PORITJGAL
OR SOUTH AFRICA!
RECOGNIZE GUINE-BISSAU !

102

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THE PALESTiMAN MOVEMENT

People have been confused and niL-led into thinking that tlie.
situation in the Mideast is impossibly compticated. Blindness to the
Palestinian people is at the root of this quandar}-. The Palestinian struggle is
a genuine and deep-rooted movement for national liberation. \s a people,
they have actively opposed colonization of their lands from the beginning:
against the Turkish rulers, against the British empire, and nOM' against
Zionism as embodied in the state of Israel, This is the key to the past and the
future of the Mideast, There is a sobering similarity bet^veen the situation of
the Palestinians and the history of the Nathe American people. The reality is
that Israel is an expansionist poM er, based on zionist colonialism.

For seven years, the Palestinian liberation movement has beim the
leading resistance to Zionism and Israeli military supremacy in the Mideast,
In the October War, the Arab nations delivered a major blow to Israel,
destroying the my\h of Israeli military invincibility, weakening her position
in the world and heightening contradictions within Israel itself. The Arab
demands were for the return of the Israeli-occupied lands seized during the
1967 Six Day War in which Israel more than tripled its size. At the core of
Mideast politics, unsettled by the October War or the l^S-Soviet negotiations
about the Mideast, are the Palestinian people.

The Palestinians are 3.3 million landless people, dispersed primarily
in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, They have
become the people of the diaspora -exiled from thecr homeland of
thousands of years by the state of Israel and the ideology of zionism.
Referred to in the US press as '‘Arab terrorisls'k 'kVrah refugees'k or
‘‘Southern Syrians”, the Palestinians have been struggling to return to their
land and for their right to fielf^dcterminarion and Hheratiofu Their claim is
just; it is based on the fact of Palestinian national existence: a c'ommon
heritage, the labor of their ancestors, the cultivation of citrus and olives,
trade, the building of the cities of Haifa, Jaffa and f x dda, their culture, their
dignity as a people.

For 24 years, hundreds of thousands of proud Palestinians have
been forced into hastily set up L,N, refugee camps uith no means of survival
except food depots and U,IN, rations. Displaced again in 1967, this time from
the occupied territories, the Palestinians farmed a second exodus, twice
refugees. The ab'odous camps, original! y organized as a temporary measure,
are the living grievance —they express the contradiction embodied in the
existence of Israel at the expense of Palestine,

Israel has never recognized the Palestinians" rights, Zionist leaders
have rejected U,N, resolutions calling for the return of the refugees to their
homeland, rejected the idea that the ‘‘so-called Palestinian people” exist, and
insisted that they are the Arabs ’problem, not theirs. From the outset, Israel
has worked toward a purely Jewish state.

It was after the holocaust in Europe in which half the Jewish
population of Europe was slaughtered by the fascists that the creation of
Israel became a reality. The LS and other Western powers denied
immigration to Jewish refugees and encouraged migration to tlie land of
Palestine, Zionists colluded with the imperialists to create Israel on an
already-populated land.

104

From its inception, Zionism has been an imperial itieology,
presented as an alternative to communism, Theodore Herzl, recognized as
the founder of modern Zionism, had toyed wth the idea of establishing a
Jewish state in Uganda or Kenya and was blunt about Zionist alliances;

England with her possessions in Asia should be most
interested in Zionism, for the shortest road to India is by way
of Palestine, England's great politicians were the first to
recognize the need for colonial expansion. That is why Great
Britain’s ensign flies on all the oceans. And so I must believe
that here in England, the idea of Zionism, which is a colonial
idea, should be easily and quickly understood in its true and
most modern form.

Israel is a settler colony. After World War H, wdth the British driven
out, the U,N, partitioned Palestine in favor of the Zionists. The Hagan a and
the Irgun, zionist terror organizations, initiated a campaign of violence
against the Palestinian people to force them off their land and out of the
(dties; to create a state “elean of Arabs,” At Deir Yassin, the Irgun killed
every one of the 254 Palestinian inhabitants on April 9, 1948. Poorly armed,
over a. million Palestinians fled over the borders, leaving everything behind.
Israel .seized and confiscated their immense lands and their property under
the Absentee Property Law's and justified this occupation wdth the lie that
iiie Palestinians left of their own free will. The 12% of the Palestinian people
who remained behind became hired labor on their own lands or in
settlements, and lived under military control, treated as an inferior people.

Israel is an expansionist country. In three successive w'ars since
partition, they have conquered and occupied Egyptian land, Syrian land, and
Jordanian land. Forty percent of the Israeli budget is taken up by w'ar.
During the October War, the US airlifted supplies of up to 800 tons of w'ar
equipment per day to Israel through the Portuguese-held Azores and Nixon
got a S2.2 billion request for military spending for Israel, Israeli government
policy is periodic warfare, ”... eternal w'ar imposed by destiny.”

Israel is a class society. Not only is it based on the special colonial
relationship of super -exploitation of native Palestinians, but half the Jewosh
population are immigrants from Asia and Africa -“Oriental” jew'S— who
face particular exploitation doing unskilled labor, living in the worst housing,
discriminated against by “European” Jews. In addition, because Israel is a
rcUgit)us state, non-Jew's are denied basic rights. These conflicts have been
submerged by zionism, yet the tensions and contradictions have produced
frustration and opposition among some sectors in Israel, particularly the
young.

israePs economy is weak, in spite of the enormous theft of
Palestinian land and tabor. It is dependent on foreign capital: German
reparations, US aid and billions from Western donations. In 1967, Israel
received 10% of all US foreign aid. The Nixon administration boasts that it
has given Lsrael more aid than the combined total of all previous
administrations. Israel is a client state of US imperialism, serving as
{loliccman and favored partner in the exploitation of the Mideast and
Northern Africa,

105

The ziojiisL goverjifociil in Israel [Supported the US in Vietnam,
supports the junta in Chile arid opposes all liberation movements in

Africa. Since the 1967 vr^ir, 26 African nalions have severed relations with
Israel on the basis of Israeli occupation of Arab land- This is also a
consequence of IsraeFs attempt to penetrate and dominate African
development. South Africa and Rhodesia continue ties with Israel.

Zionist colonialism has cultivated a worldwide image as the
besieged victim, the heroic people bolding off the barbarians, a
semi-sociaiist state where strong and free sabras made the desert bloom, the
refuge and guarantee against anti semitism. The reality is very different:

-The ziofjisf state is clearly the aggressor, the source of violence
and war in the Midcast, the occupier of stolen lands. The military solutions
of periodic w^ar and expansion, reprisal raids and constant preparation for
war are the consequence of intransigent opposition to a politically
cooperative future with Paicrttinians and Arabs, It is racist and expansionist
—the enemy of Palestinians, the Arab people, and the Jewish people,

— Israeli society internally reflects this imperialist reality:
militarized, commercial and competitive.

—The myth of socialism on the kibbutz is a powerful one, but the
kibbutzim never contained more than 5% of the Jewish population of
Palestine or Israel and are no evidence for Israel being a socialist country.
Many of the kibbuizim are on land wliich Palestinian peasants were driven
from, some directiy exploit Palestinian labor, and they are all subsidized by
Zionist funds.

106

'• Zionism does not represent Jews. It is a racist ideology based on
the claim that “God" chose a people superior to others. It has been
consistently used as an alternative to class struggle and socialism for Jews,
undermining Jewish progressive and working'class traditions.

—There is no basis for the claim that zionLsm is a bulwark against
anti-semitism. The isionist slate has allied with the most repressive and
intolerant, racist and anii-semitic regimes in the world: IVixon, Thieu, South
Africa, and the Chilean junta.

The white movement in the US has failed to give clear and open
support to the Palestinian struggle. We have not taken on the necessary task
of exposing the mylhs about Israel which cloak the true situation and disarm
many people. The nature of the state of Israel is protected by intense
passions and by the real memories of Nazism and anti-semitism. But despite
ancestors at Auschwitz and relatives in Israel, we cannot escape the
; responsibility of opposing the crimes of the Israeli government and the

consequences of Zionist ideology.

I From exile and despair, the Palestinians have slowly developed their

i resistance capability. They began to lead and define their own political and

I guerrilla movement, which accelerated after the Arab defeat in the 1967 war.

I Their brave battle at Karameh in 1968 helped make them the focal point of

\ resistance to Zionism and galvanized the national identity and yearnings of

the w'hole people. The forces and organizations of Palestinian liberation
trained thousands of Palestinians and began to mobilize their people, to
provide health and administrative services, to reclaim their history. The
active participation of Palestinian women in the struggle for liberation
challenges the long history of women’s subservience and dependence which
has been bolstered by religion and family. 'Phe Lnion for Palestinian Women
I is active within all the camps, with a primary focus on education and fighting

i the economic oppression of women.

The Palestinian strategy has been to carry out operations against
the Zionist state and Israeli-held territory and to remind the world of the
Palestinian people’s cause. Their solution is a democratic secular Palestine
that will accomodate all Palestinians: Jews, .Moslems and Christians. The
Palestinian Liberation t)rganizalion is the umbrella organization which
coordinates policy of the liberation forces.

The Palestinian liberation movement is a most progressive force in
the Mideast, as is the revolution of South Yemen —known as the Cuba of the
Mideast. The Palestinians have educated masses of people, opened up the
revolution to women and demonstrated fearless determination to win. Their
proposal of a democratic secular state stands in marked contrast to
rhetorical threats to annihilate the Jews or reactionary expressions of
anti-semitism. The Palestinians make a firm distinction between zionism and
Jews.

The presence of the Palestinian struggle is a touchstone for other
contradictions in the Mideast. The Palestinian freedom fighters are a highly
politicized group, a militant nucleus, scattered in five “host” countries. A
principle of the liberation movement has been that the revolution is
Palestinian in origin and Arab in extension. The dedicated fedayeen have
stimulated wide support among Arab people. Their stru^le and their
determined independence from Arab governments in whose lands they live,
train and organize, makes them a force for revolutionary change throughout
the Arab world.

107

Often Arab governments have rhetoricailv used the Paiestinian
cause to maintain their own power and controh w^hile consistently leaving
the Palestinians out of negotiations and excluding them from a dignified life
within their countries* These ruiers are fully aw^are of the threat posed to
their power by a vital liberation movement strategically located in their
midst. Yet they are somewhat restrained by the immense popularity of the
movement among the people of the Arab countries*

This precarious balance was shattered by "Black September*’' Over
half the population of Jordan was Palestinian when King Hussein unleashed a
major military attack to bquidate the Palestinian revolution in September
1970. The US backed Hussein with a continuous flow of arms and the tiireat
of intervention with the 6th fleet. Thousands of Palestinians were murdered^
refugee camps v^ere bombarded and destroyedj leaders executed. This was a
severe setback* The Palestinians have since regrouped in Lebanon and Syria
and rebuilt their forces.

Palestinian independence is opposed with reactionary schemes by
Jordan, completely opposed with military terror by IsracL and manipulated
by the US. The US-sponsored notion of stability and status-quo in the
Mideast is an attempt to preserve I S imperialist control of oiL using Zionist
power as the cat’s paw. The Mideast has become a world focus of struggles
over oil resources and control of strategic sea and air routes* Yet the
Palestinian struggle is at the heart of other conflicts in the MideasL. Only the
Palestinians can determine the solution which reflects the aspirations of the
Palestinian people. No "‘settlements” in the Mideast wdiich exclude the
Palestinians wifl resolve the conflict. Palestinian liberation will not be
suppressed*

The US people have been seriously deceived about the Palestinians
and Israel, This calls for a campaign to educate and focus attention on the
true situation: teach-ins, debates, and open clear support for Palestinian
liberation; reading about the Palestinian movement -The Disinherited by
Fawaz Turki, Enemy of the Sun; opposing US aid to Israel. Our silence or
acceptance of pro-zionist policy is a form of complicity with US -backed
aggression and terror, and a betrayal of internationalism*

SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE
PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!

US OUT OF THE MIDEAST !

END AID TO ISRAEL!

V IMPERIALISM IN CRISIS
THE HOME FRONT

In Vietnam the imperialisl soldiers encounter the discomforts
of those who, accustomed to the vaunted US standard of
living, must face a hostile land, the insecurity of those who
are unable to move without being aware of walking on enemy
territory, death to those who advance beyond their fortified
encampments, the permanent hostility of an entire
population* All this provokes internal repercussions in the US
and encourages the resurgence of a factor which was
attenuated in the full vigor of imperialism: class struggle even
within its own territory*

Che Guevara
Message to the Tricontinentat

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

Wc are living in a huge and naturally beautiful land. The mountains,
the deserts and the plains hold the riches of history from Indian tribes who
dwdt here — pkces like Four Corners and the Black Hills, sacred land to the
Navaho and the Sioux* Eagles fly overhead in some areas, and coyotes howl
at the moon* Snow lands, river lands: travelled rnanv times* seen hv many
people’s eyes.

No wonder we scream at the plunder, the wastefulness and
wreckage* The streams and lakes float with dead fish, virtims of industrial
waste: the mountains are ripped apart for the wealth of strip -mined coal: the
air IS thick wdth pollution* Profit chases greed in a reckless race across the
Earth,

109

Most people live in the cities, giant centers oi' commerce and
production, The cities contain tremendous potential for human development
and communit)', but the potential is mocked by the reality: burned and
abandoned houses, dirty avenues and children living in cold apartments —this
crowded up against extravagant wealth and the centers of imperial power,
Stili the culture of the many peoples grows tenaciously.

What kind of society is it? It is a class society, torn by
contradictions: the heartland of a bloody empire built on the attempted
genocide of Native Americans, the trade in African slaves, the Uves of
Chinese and Japanese and Filipino workers, the exploitation of successive
waves of immigrant labor. It is an imprisoner of nations -Guam, Samoa, the
Virgin Islands, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Black and Chicano nations. Like
other empires, it combines stolen lands, stolen riches and stolen labor.

THE ANARCHY OF PRODUCTION

Stolen wealth -not Yankee ingenuity- is the basis of the
tremendous concentration in the US of productive forces -large factories
with advanced machinery, elaborate computer systems, highly extended
organization, the labor of women and men from many nations— all
contributing to an astounding productive capability.

This accumulated productive power is used for the most selfish and
backward purposes. W^hereas this wealth is produced by the people of the
world, it is used to enrich the idle handful that controls it, and to subjugate
the dispossessed with the destructive power of economic control and war.

Monopoly capital/imperialism is an irrational system. It is not
organized to meet human needs. It is run b\" a very small ruling class whose
only morality is the morality of the maximum profit.

This handful of white men control the enormous concentrations of
wealth, the means of production, the government. These are the imperialists,
the common enemy. They hog the wealth which the people produce.
Thirty-two per cent of the personal wealth in the US is owned by 1,6% of
the population.

W'ho are these enemies? Of all the imperial dynasties and major
thieves of our time, the Rockefeller family stands out; the phenomenal
^owth of their clan’s influence and riches parallels the development of US
imperialism. They are the richest people in the world, richer than anyone has
ever been before, and they are getting richer all the time. Their wealth is
about as much as all the Blacks, Chicanos, Indians, Puerto Ricans and forty
million, poor whites in the US have put together. Like the other imperial
dynasties and families, their wealth has been dispersed into an invisible
ernpire which has spread to every corner of the world. It is an empire which
includes the world’s largest banks and industrial corporations —aerospace,
computers, oil, insurance, telephones and television. The Rockefellers
control 20% of banking in the US and 20% of all its industry. This vast
empire of wealth and power is built to grow, to self -perpetuate, to entangle
everywhere on earth that it can. It feeds on domination over the people; its
social policies are welfare cuts, stop and frisk, di'ug detention laws. It
dislocates whole populations from our cities for the construction of huge
monuments to the god profit, to commerce and world trade. It meets

rebellion —as at Aiiifa- the iron heel. The Rockefellers’ policies exist
for the coiuiiuird enitriheration of most of humanity and the continued
spiral of concentration of po^^ er atid wealth into their hands.

They arc riut the only ones. The heads of Ford and General Motors
each receive yearly salaries of almost SG^OO.OOO, vet one third of the US
people arc (:on^idei■cd poor Ly^ the government's figures. We measured the
energy crisis by cold houses, sick children and lost jobs, while the oil
companies increased llieir profits over last year by as much as 130%.

This irrational and revolting system leaves much social wealth
wasted and uiKie\ eloped, ^bat is produced bears little relationship to what is
needed. For this reason Marxist-Leninisis speak of the “anarchy of
produetiorF' u hen we refer to the \saiv productive forces are organized under
imperialism. Tlic great injustice of tliis system is that it leaves its potential
unrealized w hilc maintaining scarcity for billions of people.

All e<'onomic ar;tivity that does not go to satisfy human need is
waste. Advertising and marketing (a S30 billion a year business), useless
consumer goods, planned obsolescence, bureaucracy, the military —all aspects
of waste- add up to th.e social cost of maintaining this outmoded system. It
is working people and the oppressed of empire who bear the cost.

The scale on which mliitarv spending consumes capital is staggering,
The annual military budget is larger than the net incomes of all US
corporations put 1{>gethcr. Wi[h this the US maintains missiles, submarines,
electronic warfare and tUemka! and biological agents, nuclear weapons,
bomber forces and over three thousand military bases around the world. This
dominance of nrihiarizatioii in the economy distorts every aspect of US life.

THE CONDITIONS OF LIFE

The purpetsc of class analysis is to isolate tiie enemy and to identify
our poUuitiaj fricuids. Who ufil lead the fight? Who can be won over? Who at
least neutralized? This fraiiic^vork is as important as battle plans.

Class ai^alvsis slioukl not use the borders of the US like blinders on
a horse. This deprives us of tlic full picture and throws strategy into chaos.
Domestic class analysis must be integrated with the reality of US imperialism
as a world economy. There is one system operating internally and externally:
there is a unified straiegv for power and control although the application
and tactics v:ii y greatU ; tlierc is one main class enemy* Class analysis must
see the enthe sy slem L^nd realistically take account of imperial plunder, the
distorting culture of privilege and racism* and the realities of national
division.

Ill the I'S the impenahsk stand opposed to the huge majority of
poor and '^\ orkiiig peoptc who have no control over the fruits of our labor.

TIk ni^iug class divides us against each other by mechanisms of
stratification .nul competition, and thereby maintains its own power. Some
of these divhi inc based on real differences in wealth, status, power,
freedom, aliilhv lo sv-rvivc and be happy. Some of them are imposed by
school, by reli;Li^>CLS traiiiing or the famiSy. We are imbued with the sense of
differentness n other people in the world. The strength of the divisions
among us nica-cr-A onW the effectiveness of control over all dispossessed
people by llie ruic;- of society. The revolutionary process will sweep these

111

away, seize the transformation of society as a whole, and do away with
privilege and advantage.

US society is corrupted by the ^d]ucs that necessarily accompany
piracy —racism, greed, competitiveness, brutaiit)', sexism, callousness. The
ruling class calls the backward, criminal aspects of culture into }>eing and sets
them into motion. The societ>' is the rat-race, marked bv an anti-social
premium on individualism. There is a stark poverty for masses of people
materially and culturally, a poverty in the quality of life.

—Hunger and starvation are world realities. In the US over 30
million people cannot afford to meet basic ludritional needs. In spite of
these facts, the US government pays farmers bilhons of dollars a year not to
grow food. This keeps food prices high. The war of the rich and the poor has
taken on terrible proportions —the face of famine, malnutrition, epidemic
against the face of glut.

— Cdose to half the US population has one or more ciironic
conditions —diabetes, asthma, arthritis, heart diseases, high blood pressure.
Medical care is inadequate and inaccessible to most people* Since 1960,
medical costs have been risirtg twice as fast as the skyrocketing cost of living,
and hospital costs five times. One night in a hospital costs a week^s pay for a
worker. Health insurance companies arc getting rich from the people's pain.
The horror intensifies for poor people: malnutrition is the great hidden cause
of disease in the US. With humane priorities, the violence of socially
unnecessary pain would be eradicated , women's health would be a priority,
people would not die from hunger or poverty-relalcd illness*

—Illiteracy is increasing in the US» Schools systematically refuse to
teach Black and Third World children to read? millions of people in this
country are illiterate* Schools are minimum security prisons, geared to
repression and control of the young, to teaching the lessons of competition,
self-hatred, fear and loneliness.

—Work is hard to get: unemployment in early 1974 is running at
5-l%of the work-force. This is considered acceptable by capitalist economists.
The government also admits Lliat there are at least another 8-10%
unemployed or underemployed who are not showm in the statistics. These
low estimates add up to 1 2,000^)00 US workers out of work or
sembemployed* Women are chronically underemployed; large numbers of
young people arc marginally employed: Black people have twice the
unemployment rate of the population as a whole.

When people do find work, it is alienating and oppressive under
imperialism. Industrial accidents resulting in deaths or serious injury are
astronomical. Speedup at plants like the Vega plant in Lordstown, Ohio,
leave workers exhausted, tense and drained at the end of the day. Miners
suffer from chronic lung diseases.

Factory discipline is rigidly enforced. Between I960' 1968,
disciplinary cases doubled at Ford plants in the US, Absenteeism among
workers is on the rise. W'ork in the US stifles and imprisons the worker.
Production for w^ar and w^astc turns the fulfilling aspect of work into its
hateful opposite.

— One-qua-vtcr of the US people are living in substandard housing,
dilapidated or lacking in adequate plumbing or heating, firetraps. Half of the
Black people in the US live in bad housing. Peeling paint in tenements has
led to a major plague of lead paint poisoning; lead poisoning today cripples
more children annually than did polio before the Salk vaccine. Children are
exposed to rat bites as well as broken'dow'n facilities leading to accidents and
disease. Families are forced to pay high rents for rotten apartments* The
system's “solutions’’ to these criminal conditions are urban renewal which
tears apart poor people’s communities in order to build more profitable
higher-rent apartments, irrational tract-housing which destroys the
countryside, and mobile homes wdiich are structurally unsound and
dangerous —financed at incredible profits. The housing crisis produces
profits for real estate speculators and big landlords and unlivable conditions
for millions of US people.

—Old age, instead of being a mark of respect and value, is scary in
our society. Old people arc poor, many die in old-age homes as if age were a
disease. This society discards those whose labor is no longer exploitable for
market value. The premium put on youth distorts human links between
generations. Old people’s lessons from life and stories of the past are seldom
learned. Our loss,

—Children are denied self-respect, dignity and creativity. They have
no social power in a driving, competitive society* Almost nothing is built
with small people in mind —stairs, toilels, turnstiles, signs, systems of
transportation. Schools* television and publishing companies subject young
people to a brutal culture of ultra-violence, sexist stereotypes and racism.
Children are denied community; day-care facilities are minimal and always
facing severe cutbacks. Kids are newer people and have, by the fact of being
born, earned the rights that all human beings deserve.

113

-Personal debt to banks and corporsu'rij- ha?, inereased
astronomiealiy in the past decade, The ruling class coH-rcb and manages
miihons of people by tying them to the sysfejn with dcjbi. Because of high
inflation and unemployment, delinquencies on liisrailinenl loans hit a new
high during January and Febtuai y [974.

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All ot t-his has a profoundly destructive effect on the people and
the quaiity of life in the US, People turn against one another and ourselves.
Over one half of the hospital beds in the US are occupied by mental patients.
Alcoholism, drug addiction, child beating, rape, gambling, anger and suicide
are all at crisis proportions.

bor people in the US the basic fact of life is fear. People are afraid
of society. No one knows what is going to happen. Fear of illness, fear of
getting laid off. Afraid to go outdoors. Afraid of Black people moving into
the neighborhood, afraid of loss of status, afraid of not looking righL, afraid
of being taken advantage of, afraid to speak up, afraid of growing old.

Still, Vietnam and Black rebellion, the resistance of youth and the
rising of women begin to pry open minds and reclaim people imperialism
tried to destroy. It is liarder to sell the bourgeois life. The lace over the
machinery of greed and brutality has gaping holes. The circus has lost its
glitter. Imperialism's seamy side is up for those w^ho will examine its ugly
contours and help plan its downfall.

THE CIlA\GTN(i NATURE OF THE WORKING CLASS

People who miM sell their labor power in order to survive make up
the large and growing US proletariat (working class). The position in society
of the w^orking class is in fundamental conflict with the role and function
and activities of the imperialists.

Oppressed peoples, women and youth and other anti-imperialist
forces can and .should deliver telling blow^s against the empire now; the actual
building of socialism cannot succeed without the active support of the
industrial proletariat.

This is the proletariaUs historic mission. It is a revolutionary duty
to analyze and interpret the factors and causes which are obstacles to
forward motion of the working-class in the struggle against the class enemy.

One can repeat formulas of class structure according to income and
work and feel like a lot has been accomplished. But what is needed is a
concrete analysis of concrete conditions, “the living soul of Marxism,” What
is needed is a method that analyzes the motion of society, the contradictions
and Lite changes, in relationship to historic realities, possibilities, and
necessities. In the US in the past twenty years, the w^hite industrial
proletariat has seldom exercised its revolutionary initiative.

Third World peoples in the US, and also women, youth and
members of the armed forces have showm the most consistent initiative and
practice as measured by the decisive anti-imperialist struggle of this entire
period: the w^ar in Vietnam, These groups have been the carriers of
proletarian inLcruatumalism for this time.

The historic prediction of the leading role of the industrial
proletariat in capitalist countries emphasized the concrete processes hy
which the workers would be socialized and w^ould increasingly find
themselves in a common situation of oppression. One of the defining
characteristics of the US w^orking class is that it is composed of w^orkers of
both the oppressor and the oppressed nations. Any attempt to predict the
role of the US w^orking class must place great emphasis on the leadership that

115

has been given by Black and Third World people.

The changing nature of the working class places Black and Tliii'd
World workers in a strategic position. They have become a major part of
basic industry —steel, auto, chemical, transportation— as well as the vital
sectors that service the cities —hospital, transit and clerical work, This has
created a new level of militant leadership from below, challenging while
supremacy in the unions, confronting and radicalizing white co-workers.
Black and Third World workers have raised demands in the interest of the
whole class, including the colonized of empire —in contrast to the existing
leadership of the labor aristocracy, represented by the AFL-CIO hierarchy,
which raises demands that favor the most skilled, works against the interests
of the poor and the unorganized, and helps sustain imperialism.

Imperialism on the decline creates new historic conditions for
organizing revolutionary struggles in the oppressor nation. The crisis has
affected millions. But cri.siB does not automatically produce red
consciousness. The traditional solution to domestic economic crisis -war-
remains an option for imperialism. In the face of imperial decline, the rulei.s
make fascistic appeals to whites to try to recoup economic stability and
privilege by going along with and enforcir^ even more intensified oppression
of Third World people —welfare cutbacks, miseducation, and expeditionary
war against Third World revolution. The imperialists are only able to do this
by launching counterrevolution at home as well as abroad.

The revolutionary potential and contribution of poor, unemployed
and imprisoned people cannot be dismissed with the category
“lumpen-proletariat.” Modern imperialism involves chronic stagnation,
creating large numbers of permanently unemployed or underemployed
people. This large group cannot be equated with the small group described
by Marx. Cultural and community ties between today’s unemployed and the
most exploited workers here plays a leading role in working-class struggle.
Working-class unity cannot be built on the terms of the most privileged
sectors. Rather, the demands of the most oppressed must be the basis for
isolating the labor aristocracy in their support for US imperialism, and for
building a revolutionary class unity.

There is as yet no dynamic way to analyze the class position of

116

women. The class of a woman is typically determined by the class of her
husband or her father. This solely derivative criteria is sexist. The usual
alternative is to define a woman’s clas.s solely by her role in the work force.
Yet in itself this is inadequate since the overwhelming majority of women
perform socially necessary labor of reproducing and caring for children, and
taking care of home and mate. The work of women holds up half the sky. A
synthesis of women’s household work and her work in the productive
process is demanded by these conditions and has yet to be fully achieved.

The concept of a giant, inclusive “middle- class” as applied to
salaried and wage workers who must work to live is essentially a status
category, broadly representing income differences, not a true class. Granting
higher status has been a major tactic of social control, raised to an
ideological weapon to mute conflicting class interests by making the
affluence of a few the aspirations of many. In fact, the true middle class is
more and more an insignificant segment of the population.

The great mass of the white collar workers, clericals, service people,
teachers and professionals are underpaid, exploited and profoundly bored by
the daily dullness of their routines. They comprise the majority of the US
work force at home. They cling to the image of respectability that once
separated the old middle class from the mass of blue collar workers. Their
consciousness must be changed. The interpenetration of women’s
consciousness, youth consciousnes.s, and Third World national identity are
great channels through which their class consciousness —as workers opposing
their class enemy— can be irrigated and made fertile.

As imperialist crisis deepens, the entire fabric of social control is
tightened and becomes more severe.

Law-and-order and the propaganda barrage to instill capitalist
values all intensify. The cultural crisis created, how'ever, spills out in
rebellion, in resistance to alienating work, and in revolution. Revolutionary
constituencies will form along lines of cultural cohesion as well as along class
lines. Cultural identity can be an important element in the process of
revolutionizing mass groupings. This has been seen in national liberation
movements, and also to some degree in the women’s movement and the
youth movement.

There are broad social movements developing and growing in the
US. We have experienced, in the last decade, a tremendous upsurge of
anti-imperialist consciousness and a severe breakdown of the established
in.stitutions of power and cultural control. . All of this affects the
consciousness and social/political direction of the working class and provides
important new openings for revolutionary organizing.

BLACK AND OTHER THIRD WORLD PEOPLE IN THE US

Black and other Third World people inside the US make up
oppressed nations, subjugated peoples. The oppression of Third W'orld
peoples takes many of the same forms as the imperialist control of people in
colonies in Africa, Asia or Latin America.

THE BLACK NATION

The Black nation in the US is huge —the second largest Black
nation in the world. It is a nation formed out of distinct common history.
The Black revolution is rooted in the cultural identity, common oppression
and resistance which synthesizes two realities: the African wdio was stolen to
this country, and the slave and descen dents of slaves who built it.

The struggles of Black people in this generation have shaken racist
pow'er and culture to the heart of the empire, because the colonized status of
Black and Third W'orld peoples inside the heartland of imperialism is the
foundation of the economy and cultural structure of the US.

The Black struggle for self-determination is the strategic leading
force of the US revolution, forged from a centuries -long tradition of
resistance and revolt in the face of counterattack by the club, the cattle
prod, the gun and the lynch rope.

From the clandestine organizations of the earliest slavery days,
through mass uprisings, the open caiTving of self-defense weapons, to
guerrilla combat, the Black movement has historically raised the level of the
whole struggle.

The state has imposed the necessity, liberation movements in other
countries have helped point the direction. By fighting for control over their
communities, schools, jobs and their future as a people, Black people also
push forward the overthrow of the existing power relations in the entire
society.

Like any movement, the Black struggle grows by qualitative leaps
and thru periods of building and regrouping of forces. Organized struggles in
local ateas and the ongoing day-to-day battles of Black people are often not
as visible as the actions and rebellions of a high-tide period. But they are
urgent and necessary in the development of a people’s movement. The
Black movement today embraces the bursting-forth of revolutionary Black
art and literature, the battles for land and political power in the rural South,
consistent organized support for African liberation, the ever-increasing
organization and militancy of Black women, ideological debate and study.
Black political conventions in Gary and Lillie Rock have attempted to
develop unifying strategies and direction; Black prisoners have opened a
determined front behind the bars; armed struggle against police pow'cr has
continued in the cities. Always the Black movement persists, finding new
forms to meet new conditions and new hardships —tenacious in the people’s
fight for liberation.

118

JNSTITLTICXNS OF HACISM

They call us bandits, yet every lime mosl Hlack people pick
up our paychecks we are being robbed. Every lime we walk
into a store in our neighborhood Ave are being held up. And
every lime w^e pay oui' rent the landlord sticks a gun mto our
ribs.

Assata Shakur (Joarsne Otesimard)

Racism is a weapon at the command oi ihc; r!jling class, deliberately
fashioned into a enlturally sanctioned insli.tn[ioin written into lawy and
enforced by all the power of conscious custom and the siafe.

All primal y national institutions rTirporat lous, govcrrurienL social
services and organized labor arc under 1 00/c cflcctive white oppressive
control, Black peopie as a ^roup do not control ilicir schools, tlicir jobs or
national policy. Despite all the stale's propaganda, Black people have not
been “incorporated” into the upper, or even middle, leveis of the US social
stru cture.

In fact, the conditions of life for many Bluck people have worsened
over the last ten years. During the Jasl decade, the diffcrf^ntial between the
wages of Black and while work(n's has iricrcased, segr(^gatl{jn in the schools
has increased, drug addiction has become mi cpidemir:. The. annual sales of
General Motors - S30 billion equals the purchasing power of the entire
Black population,

lustitidiorialized ra(dsm is rnainiained and perpetuated over the
generations by the schools, the uncrnplovrrK n: c!e, ihc drug trade,

immigiation laws, birth (;onlJoh tlie army, tiic prisons.

Black and Mexican and Puerto Rican amj d.slafi labor has been
essential in building this counlrve The lah(]r r>f Thirr! Vvorhi peoph^ cleans the
streets, the flot>rs, hauls the heavy loads, (aioks the food.

Last hired, first fired, the nne mploy me nt rale among Black people

in the cities is four times tiial of Avhites and liie [^employment among Black
youth is rtow expected to exceed The fiiglj rate of Black

unemployment reduces tf>c efieets of depression eyele.s on the rest of the
population and encourages ('onipetition instead of solidarity.

As an example of I Ids rckdionsliijc General Mhb ors announced on
January 2, 1974, that about doOO workt^rs would nt‘ laid off at its Liriden,
New J c r s c y }) la n t b e ca 1 1 sc o [ i f t e 'Tn e rg > e i w ? s ' T li e ! a y r; f ■ ' s w r e pari of a
total of over 110,000 GM Avnrkcrs laid off ;:t HeU lime uaiioo-widc, Lnion
officials said that 60??^ of the Avorkers hein^ Ido oir iuberhdtcly at Linden
weia^ Black people, Puerto Kican,^ and womerc Skdied rvorkers, mostly
wliite, were sinned back onto llie asscnibly hues.

Third \\'orld women are th(^ lowest paid and m [he least skihed jobs
in the country. Black women make up half the household worksirs — in other
people’s ! rouses. They suffer lhc triple |eopardv of -ex. race and poverty.
Black wo inf m earn less llian half of whrd w lute men e;n;T:: they are
cordronted by an infant and niMlerual mor-aiBy rLWC whj'): is twice that
among wdiitcs. There is no low-cost dayman, diu' to euJ hacks h.\ welfare and
health programs.

119

The city is becoming Third World territory. Third W'orld people are
a majority in 50 of the largest cities. Where they are a large minority' (New
York, Chicago, Houston, Detroit), the public school populations are often
more than 50;^ Third W'orld. Much of the white population has moved to
outer areas and to the suburbs. The cities do not represent, govern, serve,
educate or support their population.

An army of occupation prowls the streets of Black communities.
.Sometimiis. they patrol in the name of the welfare of the community. But
last year, half the murders of civilians by police —including several cliildi'cn—
were Black people. In New York City alone, 53 Black people w'ere shot and
killed by police in 1973. From 1968'1972, there were over 100 "legal’'
murders of Black revolutionaries in the US,

The Black community has paid a tremendous price in the loss of
leaders like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Fred Hampton,
Jonathan and George Jackson, Bobby Hutton, Zayd Shakur.

Black people are more likely to get arrested, to get long prison
sentences, to he refused parole, to be beaten and killed. The rulers ai-e setting
up a unified fascist infrastructure with identity cards, federal training and
arming of police forces. Academic apologists preaching biological inferiority,
such as W'illiam Shockly, fabricate the justifications for forced sterilization
of I'hird W'orld women.

These are attacks on a people as a whole. The heroin epidemic, a
counterinsurgency weapon and product of the high profits of the
international drug trade, is a form of genocide against a whole generation of
Black youth, in the name of a cure, methadone is replacing heroin but serves
the same purpose when controlled by the state —debilitation thru addiction
with the added benefit of increased control.

A measure of the genocidal cost to Black people of imperiali.st rule
is theii' life expectancy, today fully ten years less than whites. That means
that nearly 300 million years of life are being stolen from Black people in
the US today.

The courts are machines for administering the penalties of white
rulers to Black victims. The prisons are living tombs. They function as a
major institution of economic and political control over the Black nation
—the ruling-class safety valve for the rebels, for the alienated. Prison acts as a
control on the critical mass on the streets, out of work, angry. There are
more Black men in prison than in colleges. Behavior modification techniques
are now in wide-spread use in the prisons as an attempted "final solution” to
the “problem” of rebellion and righteous anger.

Y ou wiil find no class or category more aware, more
embittered, desperate or dedicated to the ultimate remedy
—revolution. The most dedicated, the best of our kind
—you'll fiivd them in the Foisoras, San Quentins and
Soiedads,

120

George Jackson

\ n.rle^r cfiriditi^^rrv of repression Black

prisoners have inanamni h> ei t ale an jnipofLant rejiier of
resisUnee. Tln v are orfi-niizin^, stuch in^, leaeliin^ eaeli
oLlier, amt a laoniKT of fiite prisoners whi) have jofned vcith
ihenu the poLilivs and skills of re\oini:iom ^dle prison Sipuggle
is a mieroeosm of tfie revolt! tiojmrv process, eornhiriing
c> V m e d resist a n e e . nnass rebel lion, polit ira! edneat ion
colicctiv es, cultural u orkshops. prisovi uiiiofis, dav-to-day
resistanee. Since Bie lihcralioii uf AlticM in beptcnihein i971 ,
hiijidrcds of prisons around ihe vountrv have been held under
seige by prisoners. 'I'he prison uiovemenL the fruit of terrible
material conditions and torture, has produreti a heroic
resistance at id lias given birth to many great leaders.

Black Culture, Black Power

This is tlie era of nationa! liberation. Black people this

early and identified with it: .Mah;u]m K uame<i US imperialistn as the
‘'common emnn}’’: Black people weieomed Fidel to Harlem in 1961: the
Black movemcnl was the first in this country to rhahege Israel’s nghl to
Palestine: SNCC tuganized early resistance against the draft and in solidarity
with the Vieljiamese: Martin butlier King shook the country with fiis
denunciation of the [JS war In V'iebiam: Muhammed Ali was another teacher
in his principled r esistance to the ec ft.

A grassroots movemcjjf i>' ultura! pride anil nalional unitv began to
reclaim Black history, to tmeauv; -c colleelive eoz^^^eiousness and sohdariLy.
The slogan and feeling tliat ' Bi;a k is BeautifuP' arose every v^ here among
Black people, Tlie oppressor society has w aged war against Black ^ailture [jy

commercialization, by trying to subvert it, by encouraging the form and
repressing the substance. But a people’s culture persists and takes newforms:
Black cultural identity has drawn new strength from the progress and
determination of liberation movements in Africa. In 1973, over 150,000
Black people marched in support of their sisters and brothers on African
Liberation Day,

The political form of the national movement became the demand
for Black Power.

Black Power is a revolutionary demand, a demand for freedom and
self-determination. It has meant struggle for control of community
institutions like the schools, hospitals, daycare centers, and demands for land
and political power in the cities* It has taken the form of spontaneous mass
rebellion and armed organization. The demand for Black Power has not been

Each battle for power is a process of relentless struggle and
mobilization. Black parents in Ocean Hili- Brownsville have been fighting for
community control of their schools for over five years. The United Black
Workers at the Mahwah, New Jersey Ford Motor Plant have led wildcat
strikes against the company and have done painstaking organizing since 1968
in their battle against white supremacy in the UAW. This kind of persistent
work and sacrifice is the essence of the continuing struggle for Black Power
and liberation.

Support for Self-Determination

Black and Third World people's right to determine the direction of
their struggle is undeniable. Self-determination means the right of an
oppressed people to seize an 1 organize their future and the future of their
children*

We support Black and Third World people’s right to
self-determination, including the right to secession* There is nothing sacred
and certainly nothing historically just about the present fifty-state
government or the present boundaries of the US.

To argue, as some do, that Black liberation must wait upon the
industrial proletariat or the socialist revolution of the w^hole US, is both false
and racist. In practice, this position demands that Black people wait, that
they follow an oppressor-nation timetable for liberation* It ignores the fact
that empires get broken do^vn in different ways; by wars and occupation, by
revolt of external and internal colonies, by disintegration and internal rot
and combinations of all these.

Whatever decisions Black people and other oppressed peoples make
in exercising this right to self-determination, white revolutionaries and
anti-imperialists have a very clear-cut responsibility to support these
decisions once they are arrived at* This doesnotmean to support only those
choices one approves of, nor only those that can be worked out by reforms
within the existing form of the US —“one nation, under god, indivisible*”
Support for the right to self-determination is a principle and a
prerequisite to successful revolutionary movement in the oppressor nation*

122

NATIVE AMERICANS

Native Americans have renewed iheir long history of resistance with
a power, militancy and determination which is an example for all struggles.
The Indian struggle is a cultural resurgence which involves the whole people
as weU as a political fight for dignity and sur\ival. The heroic occupation of
Wounded Knee w^as part of a fabric of audacious action which has shaken the
country in reeent years: the Native American take-over of Alcatraz Island,
the fight of the Pit River Indians in California to keep iheir land, the
Nisqually and Puyallup struggles in Washington State for their fishing rights,
the whole series of meetings, gatherings and protest called the Trail of
Broken Treaties, which led to the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
headquarters in Washington, in 1972.

Native Americans have survived all attempts at cultural, economic
and political genocide. They have made it clear that their battle continues
here and now and they have shattered the whiternan’s myth that Indian
culture and resistance died with the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is a chief enemy of Indian people, a
colonial administration which determines the lives of Native Americans, The
BIA runs all Native American scliools; ail elected tribal leaders must be
approved by the Interior Department or the BIA; the BIA must sanction any
Indian land sales, leases or wills: the BIA officials argue in favor of corporate
land-grabs on the spurious grounds that the sales revenues will bring the
tribes prosperity. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is an agency w^hich serves the
interests of the US rulers —its aim is to administer the continued rip-off of
Indian land and resources.

The BIA has made it policy lo refuse aid to the hundreds of
thousands of Indians who have left the reservations and settled in the urban
centers. The American Indian Movement (AIM) was born out of the struggles
of these urban Indians against police brutality and impossible livings
conditions.

Conditions on Native American reservations are a further
indictment of this system: life expectancy is 43 years, infant mortality runs
three times as high as the rest of the US, one-half of all Indian students never
graduate from the poorly-serviced, rundown, racist BIA school system, BIA
schools don^t teach Native American languages, and vilify the heritage and
culture of Indian people. Reclaiming the Native American past is one of the
basic elements of the Indian struggle today.

The destruction and theft of Native American land has continued.
Northern Cheyenne and Crow people in Montana are faced with the plans of
major coal companies like Peabody to stripmine their territory and build a
massive industrial complex. Lumber companies on the West Coast have
bought hundreds of thousands of acres of Indian land in the last few years
—purchases arranged thru the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Many of the resource
exploitation projects underway in the Canadian north, like the huge James
Bay hydroelectric project in Quebec, are being developed on land which still
belongs to Indian and Eskimo people. Ecological devastation, accompanied
by loss of community and an inability to maintain tribal ways, are the results
of these land grabs by major corporations and governments. The fight to save
their land and their right to use it, remains a fundamental part of the lives of
Native Americans.

123

One of the most imporiant current Indian battles surrounds the US
prosecution of ihe Wounded Knee liberators. Over 300 defendants, including
the leadership of AIM, arc being charged With felonies* Trials are taking place
throughout South Dakota and in Minnesota* A major political point at the
trial, as at the Wounded Knee occupation, is that the government has broken
the 1868 Treaty with the Oglaia people* The Oglalas rightfully demand that
this treaty, which proclaims their sovereignty as a people, be respected and
upheld. Support the Wounded Knee freedom-fighters.

THE CHICANO STRUGGLE

The Chicano movement grovt^s out of the struggle of ten million
oppressed people who live inside the US, mostly in the Southwest. Just as
the Black nation has been denied its true history, official history has tried to
deny the real accompbshments and irrepressible resistance of the Chicano
people,

WhaUs called the “Southwest of the US’" is in reality “El Norte”,
the vaiit borderland of Mexico rubbed in the Mexican-American War of 1848*
The Mexican people, La Raza* are an Iiido-hispano people (mestizo)* They
have strong Indian roots reaching to the original inhabitants of the Americas,
Legend has it that the Aztecs originated in this region, called Aztian —the
spiritual homeland of La Raza,

The struggle to reclaim Chicano land was dramatically renewed in
1967 by the Land Grant Movement in New Mexico* The attack on the Tierra
Amarilla Courthouse in June, 1967, was a guerrilla attack against a domestic
agency of colonialism. For many Anglos, this raid produced the first real
consciousness of the Chicano people’s historical and legal claim to the land
of the Southwest*

This Anglo -occupied territory has been developed largely thru the
slave-Eke exploitation of Mexican labor* Chicanos are forced into the most
arduous and hazardous jobs at low wages but are fighting back. The
dedicated struggle by the farmworkers to win union recognition is now
threatened by the alliance between the Teamsters Union and the growers
—carried out Wth \iolent attacks and sweetheart contracts* This move is a
major attempt to defeat the UFWU and break its popular base* Chicana
women have just won a hard fought two-year strike for union recognition
against the Farah Clothing Company in Southern Texas,

Hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens enter the US illegally
every year. They are hiied for agricultural, industrial and service jobs at
wages often below the US minimum wage, without access to social services
and welfare* Employers try to use immigrant workers to depress wages and
break strikes of Chicano workers* The conditions that cause this immigration
are a result of US domination of Mexico’s economy: US companies inside
Mexico pay workers S2 to $3 a day, reap up to 60% profit on investments,
leaving Mexico “underdeveloped”. Unemployment in Mexico, by some
estimates, is up to 48% * Resistance to US imperialism in Mexico has
intensified greatly in the past year —including a guerrilla kidnapping of the
US Consul in Guadalajara, bombings of large US corporations in Mexico,
destruction of unsafe farm labor buses in Mexicali,

Inside the US, the Mexican immigrant workers are treated Wth

124

racism and bnitaiity, They suffer unsafe bus transport \sdth frequent
accidents and death, phony imprisonment resulting in coerced labor, and
periodic attacks and roundup* by the US Immigration and Naturalization
service.

Tiicsc roundups of “illegal” immigrants are a form of police terror
against the entire Chicaiio community. For example, in the summer of 1973,
11.000 people were rounded-up within the Los Angeles area and deported.
There is no judicial process for “aliens” and in the barrio, brown sldn is
“probable cause” for harassment and arrest. There were widespread
community protest.# and demonstrations against these fascist measures.

'i'he police occupy tiie barrio. In addition to general harrassment,
they attempt to terrorize the people ^vith periodic murders of unarmed
Chicanos. A related strategy for destruction is police-protected importation
of drugs into the barrio. In response to police terror, there have been
militant mobilizations of the people —youth organizations, community
.support i'or police victims, concerted efforts to drive drug pushers out of tlie
community. In 1970 and 1971, an underground Chicano group in Los
Angeles carried out a series of guerrilla bombings against school, police and
corporate targets.

Tlie oppressor systematically attacks the culture, language and
history of the C'iiieano people. The concern for a truthful Chicano education
for the children is a on tiler of the struggle. There have been militant high
school rcbeliions in Denver, Chicano school walkouts in L.A., fights for
bilingual education and for Chicano liistory and culture throughout the
Soutliw'e.sL Pride in La Raza is strong, Chicano art and poetry arc Nourishing
in the barrio.

At tile height of the Vietnam War, Chicanos were hit by'
disproportiouatelv higli draft calls and casualty rates —coerced to fight
against sisters and brothers in Vietnam. Resistance was high. The Chicano
Moratorium became the leading anti-war force in Los Angeles. Their August,
1970 demonstration drew oO.OOO people who fought back miiitantly when
the police attacked and killed three Chicanos.

Tlie oppression of Chicanos is deep and their resistance is e.Mensive.
Anglos have borrowed and benefit ted from Chicano culture, skills, labor and
struggles. The liberation .struggle of La Raza is critical to creating a humane
society in the US. Wc have a responsibility and a human need to learn ahoui
and acLively support the Chicano struggle for self-determination,

125

THE RISING OF WOMEN

The women’s movement is rooted in the common oppression of
women. It is built on w^omen’s continuous resistance to sexism and is the
^anddaughter of the organized struggles of women 120 years ago. It is a
popularly-based movement, imbued wdth a unique spirit and the fierce
beauty of masses of w^omen actively claiming our pow'cr and our futures. It
contains the powder to transform and become a leading force in our
revolution.

THE CONDITION OF WOMEN

The subjugation of women is intrinsic to imperialism, Male
supremacy is given concrete form in the family, in the work force, in the
social institutions. Sexism is perpetuated and enforced by the culture and
ideology^ of imperial society. So basic is the oppression of w^omen to the
functioning of this system that while many w^omen can improve their
circumstances within the system, w^e cannot win full coDective liberation
without overturning the entire structure of imperialism.

Home and Family

The modern male-run nuclear family, w^hen >ve tear away the veil of
sentimentality, is the basic unit of capitalist society. Capitalism and the
modern family matured together historically, feeding each other’s
development. In the family, women both reproduce the labor force and
begin the socialization process of the new^ generation, w^hich is essential to
the productive system and the functioning of society* Women bear the major
responsibility for the nurturing, health and education of families. These are
treated like personal problems, yet they are necessary tasks, fulfilled at
minimal cost and effort to the imperialists,

Housew^ork is hard wwk, done atone, but it is denied any social
value and it is not paid for in any formal way.

It is paid in barter: consumer comfort, a sense of economic
^curity, status.

The individual capitalist family structure is a w^asteful social form,
not healthy for children to grow up in, a trap for w^omen. It is a sanctioned
form for sexual exploitation and a hypocritical double standard. The family
breeds competitiveness among us, allows no future to w^omen wdth grown
children, and demeans old w^oinen, separating them from the life of the
community.

Yet in a hostile, competitive society such as this one, the family is
for many Third World and poor people the only center of community, of
collective survival, a refuge* Until other forms can grow and develop, the
family will remain necessary as w^ell as intolerable* There are many families,
an increasing number, headed by women* The ability of single mothers to
work and raise and care for children and maintain a household is a
monument to w^omen’s strength and determination*

126

Women work both inside and outside the home. Having so many
unemployed and underemployed women as a reserve of labor is a necessity
to modern monopoly capital. Women are available to be exploited in case of
war or some other change in the economic situation. Women are a
comparatively skilled group, but because of the mj^-th that most women who
work are “secondary breadwinners” we work for lower pay and are neither
organized nor trained.

Over 40% of the work force is women, and over 40% of women
work. Women work mainly in service trades and clerical work, and those of
us who work in production work mostly in semi-skilled jobs in textile,
garment and culinary trades —the traditional work of women. Although
getting out of the homes gives women a place of socialized contact and
some independence, it also compounds our oppression. Women's pay
averages three-fifths that of men. Of the 34 million women in the work
force, little more than four million are members of unions. Women workers
who are organized are mostly in unions notorious for white male control,
There are no maternity-leave benefits and no daycare facilities. The lowest
paid workers in US society are Black and Third World women.

Government Policies

Women are oppressed and controlled by government agencies and
are the immediate victims of economic crisis. The Department of Health,
Education and Welfare (HEW), for example, directly affects the lives of
millions of women and their families, HEW is the largest domestic arm of the
government, comparable in size and function only to the Defense
Department,

HEW is a classic institution of male supremacy, built on the
oppression of women, children and old people. It is typical of the male
monopoly of power: Caspar Weinberger, known as Cap4he-Knife for his
budget cuts, makes $60,000 a year as head of HEW. He is a Nixon-man and a
leech.

The brunt of HEW policies falls on women. Rockefeller and Reagan
have been running model HEW programs to force as many people off welfare
as possible, especially AFDC, Welfare amounts to government enforced
malnutrition; people are maintained below subsistence. Today 45% of all
city families headed by women live in poverty —by official standards that
means improperly nourished. Five million w^omen in the US are medically
indigent, face undiagnosed and untreated illness. Threatened with losing the
few^ crumbs of welfare, women are coerced, for economic and racist reasons,
into sterilization programs. Last year, HEW financed between 100,000 and
200,000 sterilizations through medicaid and special family planning clinics.
If you are Black or poor or old or a women w"ho is a head of a household^
you are directly affected by HEW programs^ They control your money and
rob you of your dignity and your privacy as a condition of aid.

In certain ways, HEW is to poor women like the Bureau of Indian
Affairs is to Native American people. It claims to be the giver of life’s
necessities -but under the guise of providing social services, it functions to
control and contain us, as a safety valve against crisis and revolt, HEW is really
the Department of Illness, Ignorance and Wretchedness,

127

Thf^ C’j.i.turn of

is ornoi'ced and pcrpeluaU'd [^v ihc imporial L^Ldi.nrco ProJij
a tai.:gh[ to Unnk of out'selses as "^voak in bo{J\ and Jiiind,
:il;o. dcpfn-.dmt objects. Tha ovgauizatir^n oi' s(Hdct\' leaahes
ie inferiorii)^ of womara i'iiru scbc^ds v'o arc channeled and
aarc for marriage a^n( sex-segrcgatcd lobs. denied a h JI
ter !he:^o same schools biaoiC footiicrs i.he ’failure’' of
U) read* Thv. medfj portrays reurnen as cinpj'v-iK'aded* sexy
nsuniers* Old^n- am slnioted uslcc. coped* ridicnled

-eul off iVoni usel nl rn'k and cr^^a f i ^ boo

[segh!: that our holo^y js onr oc-iiiiv. i-: arc eoniitioned to
thin raaiTOV. eonfines lo hdiill oor pviciai'v rnk; as scxnal
I'Obneci's. Disi.ortcd and eronnrhf .dandard- of heaid\' arc
a avhoje system of scmoo ohiecl ifiea i.iom V;' c live in an
vrhere women are d(ni!ob eon hoi of onr bodies H'iicrc
i and faheos ^o hand ;c hairO pro^i.di.itio!' and sccnal

i arc iaughf to use women,

dersidc oi this objccth'ieahun is rape -a massfve.^ brutal
oerochaLcd on ’vvoriicn b- mre, AhWi .aoos art: red rcnoricd

: L ■ A ^

are fm lower tfiaii ibc reahiyc hoi atii.u'b^ oo ivomcn
'Steal, growhig categciry of crime in the 1 o. d be paralyzing
sexual abuse, fanned b\ media and poihc ar.nings, adds up
urtew for women.

arcssiou of \vornen perveids i}\c nLijouad vsKkw of the whole
ahenated from children and from emveoi emohOiC Women
one another, ihrealrmed and comoctmjg. hexism is a form of
mna: >chkh enaldes l.hc :ms!.cm to Lwoioi: ecersones

Reclaiming our heritage. Women are reconstructing the buried truth
about women, weaving together the reai history of women's contributionSj
rebellions and defeats. W'e are tearing apart the lies of docility and placing
ourselves back in history. Unearthing knowledge of the past has led to a
rediscovery of Vkhtehes and warriors, abolitionists and artists, ancient mvlhs
and common women, labor organisers and healers.

Breaking the chains of self-hatred, self-deniah and despair.
Feminisni entered ^vomen's lives like a whirlwind and a blessing. It tlire^v
lives into turmoil, jnarriages burst apart, long suppressed anger erupted in
painful everyday confrontations with sexism. Women's consciousness was
seized as (he last hope for sanity. We took up the fight to define ourselves.
We are giving birth to ourselves.

Women liking women, W'oinen have found one another and that has
made the biggest difference of ail. We begin to learn from and teach each
other, to build on the commonality of our experience. Si-^terhood does
not always come easily and we learn to fight for it.

Relations based on power preclude the realization of affection and
intimacy; they drain our strength and are fought on uneven terms. Mutual
and expressive sexuality is part of the human potential for liberation. This
has become a striving and a strength of the w^omerfs movement, in
relation sliips between women and men, and in relationships between women.

Lesbianism has been an affirmation of unity and a challenge to the
partnership of sexuality and domination. Women have opposed the
dominant culture's treatment of homosexuals —people who are harassed and
assaulted, denied cmpIoynKUit and housing, raped arid even murdered
because they don’t conform to standard sexual roles and moraliry. Net all
gay culture transcends the sexism of US life, but the indepetuience of lesbian
sisters and the attempts of gay people to live according to their own
definitions represent an attack on sexist ideology which subjugates women.
We support the right of ad people to live according to theh sexual
preferences without dkscriminalion or fear of reprisals.

Women’s Culture

Women hdw. [raditionally been the guardians and transmitters of
culture, and women’s liberaLion has loosened an explosion of writing, music
and art for, by and about women. Women’s culture reflects ami pulls
forward our colle(;tive aspirations. The creation of women’s alternative
institutions - anLi-sexisI and pro-women— inciudes health dimes, dijycare
centers, schools, newspapers, communities. We are trying to raise children
without sex stereotypes, witli new ^^alues; learning new skills; trying to deal
with the problems of mental health, aging and mutual survival.

Institutiofiai Sexism, Sexism is carried by and perpetuated by the
culture and by individual men ; these are often its most visible and blarariL
manifestations. But underlying sexist culture is the s}^s^ema^ie
institutionalization of male suprenmey, 'j’he w^omerUs movement uncovered
and began to oppose and attack the institutions wdiich concretii^e sexism ^

Anti-sexist men. Sexism, which denies the humanity of w'omen,
destroys the humanity of men. Men, too, are understanding that sexisin
makes them emorionalty barren and culturally warped. In rcspofisc to the
challenge of women, many men have begun to make a commitmcnl
struggle against sexism. These allies are a victory of the wo men’s niovemern.

i29

They are an indication of the potential for further alliances with those in
struggle and with oppressed people everywhere.

TASKS FOR REVOLUTIONARY WOMEN

At this point, there is no widely -felt organized force of
revolutionary women; this has yet to be defined and built. This force is
necessary to realize the full potential of the uprising of women, to carry it
forward, to embody and fight for the collective interests of women.

We recognize the necessity of resisting and destroying the
anti-women institutions of society. We recognize that sexism and imperialism
are the enemy of all oppressed women, and that is our common ground. Our
goal is the development of a feminism which genuinely determines,
safeguards and defends the collective interests of women, and which points
in the direction of revolution. We need to build a revolutionary feminism.

Women are not isolated from the clashes and contradictions in US
society. These are reflected in the contradictions holding back the
development of a revolutionary woman’s politics. Class privilege, racism,
liberalism and anti-militancy, if not met head on, will militate against the
development of revolutionary feminism and defeat the struggle for the full
freedom of women.

When the women’s movement first began, its spontaneity and
openness was a great strength. We now have to raise the political questions,
struggle them out, and organize ourselves. Organization and leadership are
major weapons of revolution. We cannot afford to give them away because
of fear of elitism. Anti-elitism is destructive if its political content isn’t
left-wing. We need to study, to have ideological debate among women who
work in many different facets of the struggle to create a new and
comprehensive analysis of women in society and in revolution.

Overcoming Class Privilege

God almighty made women;
the Rockefeller gang made ladies.
—Mother Jones

The women’s movement grew' up as a cross-class movement. The
strength of this lies in our recognition of the commonality of women,
exposing the shallowness of false middle-class consciousness, and making
alliances widely against our real enemies.

Ruling-class women who are committed to their class interests are

130

clearly enemies* They sustdin and take part in tlie oppression of women
around the world* They are collaborators. Imless they renounce their
privileges and join the struggle they will always be the enemy*

Bourgeois feminisrnj in all its forms, has come to play a leading role
in defining the voice of the women's movement. Bourgeois feminism
—which is also feminism for white women— is the fight for individual
solutions to the oppression of w^ornen, even though it may be cloaked in very
radical language and the forms of liberation. Bourgeois feminism assumes
that the advancement of individual women to positions of power in the
society —on corporate boards of directors, for example— is somehow a
victory for women as a group* But (career-making for some w^omen is a fight
for privilege, and turns into a fight for the protection of that privilege from
poor and Third World women underneath. Often the 'Treedorn'' of upper
class w^ornen is based on having a Black women do her housew^ork*
Imperialism is an old master at encouraging the creation of a bought-off
group to split, confuse and move against a people's movement* This is why
the Ford Foundation* big industry, and the police forces and FBI are
recruiting among women as well as investigating the women’s movement*

We can build the w^omen’s movement among poor and working
women. The women's mov(^ment of the last five years has touched the
consciousness of millions of women and raised the possibilities of seizing
control over our lives, wdiich is the first step into revolution* In this period of
growing social and economic dislocation, women are at the intersection of
the crises and will fight to survive*

Opposing Racism

In the past, I don't care how poor this white women was, in
the South she still felt like she was more than us. In the
North, I don’t care how poor or rich this white women has
been, she still felt like she was more than us. But coming to
the realization of the thing, her freedom is shackled in chains
to mine, and she realized for the first time that she is not free
until I am free*

Fannie Lou Harner

There is a tradition of white women siding with Black and Third World
people, and a tradition also of turning against them* Women were the prime
movers in the best w^ork of Reconstruction, but in the betrayal and
counterrevolution that followed, middle-class white women withdrew from
full solidarity with the Black struggle and contributed to the overthrow and
defeat of the IteconstrLTCtion movement* While Black men w^erc lynched for
even looking at a white woman, the rape of Black women by white men was
institutionalized over hundreds of years. While women, raised on a pedestal,
were dehumanized and desexed: we were used and conipli(dt, as well a*s
victims* These are historical realities which stand behind our dilemmas
today*

The colonized status of Third World w^oinen is enforced by society
on every iev(d, even the level of self -conception* One of the most cynically

I3I

destructive attacks is the infamous Moynihan Report, issued in 1965 for
LBJ’s Great Society. This doctrine says that the Black family is pathological
(sick) because of the strength of Black women: that Black women are
responsible for the position of Black men in society. These theories try to
divide the Black community against itself and breed self-hatred among Black
women. They have influenced the popular consciousness of a generation and
have been roundly denounced by Black women.

Third World women are organizing, in school struggies, union
struggles, welfare struggles —many in a national liberation context. Many
Third World women define their enemy as imperialism. They lead in welfare
and prison movements. They have much to teach us about who our enemy
is, international sisterhood, and how to strengthen a people to fight.

Racism is used against women, a form of counterinsurgency to
divide us, the velvet glove and iron fist. By exploiting our concern for our
families, the state convinces many white women that our main enemy is
Third World people. This is particularly powerful when our children are used
as a weapon. W'omen’s fears are created and manipulated; real fear of rape is
turned into fear of Third W'orld men by the press and the police; in truth,
most wiiite w'omen victims of rape are raped by white 211 en.

Anti-sexist work is not necessarily anti-racist, or anti-imperialist.
Some women argue that w'e alw'ays fought for other people, now w'omen are
fighting our own battles. Let us extend our sisterhood to the 100,000
W'omen in Thieu’s prisons, to the women in Palestinian refugee camps, to the
dispossessed women in Puerto Rico, and to the women in prison here. Let us
encourage the w'omen w'ho work against the Indochina War. Let us not
justify complacency in the name of women.

Militancy

Our movement will be self-defeating if we reject militancy' as
“male” and “macho.” This detracts from the resistance of our sisters in the
past, denies the necessarily violent nature of the struggle, and is blind to the
courage of the wars for national liberation bei 2 ig waged against the US.
Acceptance of the status quo of imperialism means acceptance of
unprecedented violence.

There is a particular importance in women learjiing to fight. For us
-»nueh the same as for w'O men W'ho join liberation struggles in Third W'orld
countries —actually confronting the enemy and fighting in demonstrations,
acts of resistance or armed attacks is tearing off of the veil, a rejection of the
passivity and acceptance for which we are bi'ed. W’'ome 2 i fighters are
frightening apparitions to the enemy' and examples for us.

V/omen play a particular role in the armed struggle w'hich guerrillas
cannot well afford to ignore. W'omen are fierce fighters, out of our righteous
anger at oppression; but w'e also have to w'ork hard to learn necessary skills
not naturally taught us. Women are careful fighters, and uirdcr.stand the need
to rid our fighting of ego; w'e also cannot let tins strength turn into
conservatism. W'omen unite and center the revolutionary' community',
mobilize the comrades to fight. This necessarily involves grasping the tools of
ideology and political struggle.

132

Insurgent

In building alternative institutions for womenj we must not deceive
ourselves into thinking that our clinics or schools have soived the problem of
health care and education for the mass of women. We must he aw^are of who
they serve and who they don’t. Alternative institutions must also become
insurgent bases for a fight against the mass social institutions, on behalf of
w'omen at the mercy of hospital emergency rooms, public housing, food
stamp lines, and public schools.

Without power, reforms can be turned into weapons against us.
Reforms which w^ere fought for every inch of tliC way —such as public
schools, birth control, social security and trade unions— become their
opposite in the bands of the ruling class. We must make sure our victories are
not at the expense of our sisters. Women have fought for abortion reform, a
tremendous victory, but w^e have to fighl to exercise control over the
burgeoning abortion business and find ways to make sure that poor women
can take advantage of this victory. Womeji have struggled long for safe
effective birth control, but we do not have control of our reproduction. Poor
and Third World women are routinely used for medical experimentation and
profit, subject to forced sterilization and unsafe "'family planning’’. We have
the obligation to fight to stop the wdiolesale geaocidal use of sterilization
and population contrt)! against the women of haiin America.

Tt is only the reforms which we have fought for that make our lives
bearable; survival struggles around conditions of work, welfare, life, health
can weaken the enemy, expose hLs tricks, and win something real for us all.
Together thc^e elements make up a good program of siruggie.

But imperialism will never, can never, free all women. Sexism will
not be destroyed until imperialism is overthrown. It is in the collective
interests of women to do this and take full part in building a socialist
revolution. We need power. Socialist revolution hiys the foundation for the
liberation of women and begins dismantling the tenacious institutions of
sexism. The revolutionary movement, on its part, must embrace and support
the rising of women. There must a solid and irrevocable commitment made
to w^omen’s liberation, A revolution is not a moment ui time. Old ideas
reassert themselves and have to be fought against. Revolution is a continuing
process.

THE YOUTH REBELLION

The revolutionary youth movement is a proud and beautiful thing.
It has made a significant contribution to revolutionizing this society. The
student movement engendered militancy and daring at an early stage of
struggle and has greater promise still.

Control of the cultural apparatus and value system is an essential
aspect of securing the home base for a world empire. Therefore, struggles
which expose, break-down and liberate people from this social structure are
very important and form a front line of the cultural revolution.

The cultural rebellion of youth has been a significant assault on the
controls of empire. .41 its best it actively carried the people of the US into
supporting the Vietnamese people’s struggle for liberation and opposing the
war, and it has provided an arena of struggle against racism w'here victories
have been won. It produced a movement committed to communal and
collective life-styles, sexual liberation and anti -materialist values.

YOUTH CLLTURE

The revolutionary youth movement grew out of the contradictions
within the oppressor nation society. It grew up at a unique moment: the
height of affluence.

Modern US society, organized for the business of imperialism, is a
place where young people face particular oppression. Schools, the family,
the media all attempt to socialize us into a competitive, acquisitive,
individualized system. The end result is intended to be competitive sexual
roles, marriage, and alienating, humiliating work as functionaries for
imperialism.

In US society, life is alienating. Sexuality is stripped of its
expressive and loving qualities, and institutionalized in marriage, prostitution
or pornography. Sexuality is denied its human content, and is offered for
sale. Art, too, is a commodity, something to be bought and sold. So are
games and sports —no longer human exercises for the fun and development
of people, but big business, packaged and programmed. The alienation of life
is an ongoing explosive condition of our times.

Youth oppre.ssion is organized and institutionalized. Young people
are channeled and coerced in schools; misled, miseducated, misused. Schools
have become alien from the real process of learning about the w'orid or how
to use things. Schools are often huge minimum -security prisons where we are
held and controlled for large parts of our lives. In .schools we are taught to
respect arbitrary authority, to follow orders, and to compete with sisters and
brothers. The education industry plays the additional role of keeping huge
numbers of young people out of the slirinking job market, thereby propping
up the faltering system. Schools in many ways are the work places of youth.

Youth are rebellious against meaningless work and face the
problems of less skill and seniority, low pay scales, dirtier w'ork.
Unemployment and underemployment are massive among youth; young
people are used as a reserve pool of low-skilled labor.

134

Police, the courts, and prisons are increasingly geared to control of
the young. Out of work, out of luck, we are more likely to be involved in
minor crime. The prison population is increasingly a young population.

A large segment of youth has rejected the traditional values of
society and has struck off in search of a better way, a more fulfilling life,
more humane and dignified social relations. Young people have become
commited to collective work styles, to communities where work and life are
integrated, where respect for community and culture and emironment are
priorities. We are learning to be open to other people’s cultures and have
borrowed from the music, stories and ways of other peoples to enrich our
own.

The youth movement did not materialize out of thin air but in
response to imperialism. It united around and gathered momentum in the
fight against the war in Vietnam. It declined when the troop withdra>vals and
the end of the draft removed the most compelling elements bringing young
people into struggle. The killings at Jackson State and Kent State during the
protests against the invasion of Cambodia scared many people who had never
experienced the wrath of imperialism so directly. People were confronted
with the ruthlessness and arbitrariness of repression. The culture produced a
group of people^ nomads, communal semi-hustlers, sharing a certain sense
of being alien to and in opposition to the US imperial way of life.

At the same time, this culture benefited from the affluence of
empire, and in some part removed itself from engaging against the
perpetrators of empire by escaping from the institutions of society.

The cities are the front line in many ways, but the importance of
work done in rural areas should not be underestimated. Potential exists for
organizing among the rural poor. Unity can be built with Native Americans,
Southern Blacks, Appalachians, the rural Chicano and poor white
population, for the redress of the oldest and some of the crudest crimes of
imperialism.

135

One edge of youth culture consisted of politically active people:
organizers, embattled artists, people’s musicians, free schoolers, mothers and
fathers and children of communal families. What has happened to this large
grouping of people as the fat of affluence has dissolved over the last three
years ^

Some have become small business men, and have taken on the
material characteristics of their parent’s generation* But most have gone to
work, or are on welfare, or are even maintaining a rural subsistance through
small farming or crafts* Many live at the edge of getting by “Wumeri alone
with small children, people eking out a living in groups. To the extent that
communities survive among this group of people, they are real bases for
organizers, not necessarily revolutionary, but open* This group of people
constitutes a de classe sector —increasingly proletarianized— whose
experience in political work or in organizing alternatives can be a valuable
contribution to our movement.

There are serious weaknesses in youth culture. It is imbued with
the sexist values of the dominant culture that bore it. It mainly looks to
male heroes for models. It has failed to genuinely meet women’s needs or to
make a wholehearted commitment to fighting sexism,

Sometimes trying to build cultural alternatives has become a
substitute for struggle, or has collapsed into hip capitalism. “Do your own
thing” “at first an advocacy to add your own unique contribution to the
community effort, has become a slogan for individualism, splitting apart, and
undermining the solidarity that has been built*

In many ways, the culture has withdrawn to rest on its privileges,
dissociating from active opposition to racism and from active identification
with Black and Third World people* A flippant attitude toward
consciousness-expanding drugs is separated from the whole picture of
deathly and pacifying drugs pumped into insurgent communities* The
problems of heroin, methadone, alcohol and pills have not been dealt with*
Although young people experience police oppression day-to-day* police
power directed against Black and Third World people is not combatted.
Rarely do alternative institutions organize to meet the needs of the Black
community, Third World children, the old*

The best of the culture is realized through the process of struggle
itself —this is what creates unity of opposition, builds anti-racism, breathes
life into the sense of community and makes our communities insurgent*

Revolutionaries must embrace the explosive content of the
profound alienation young people experience in US society, and struggle
with and change its accomodations to imperialLsm. It is oiir view that the
youth movement is a force that has and wiil continue to affect the
consciousness of the working-class and the society as a whole* We must
approach the youth movement with a consciousness of the great
contributions made by students, GIs and other voung people in the
anti-imperiaiisl struggles of a decade*

THE ARMED FORCES

The army is one of the central oppressive institutions of youth.
Young men are forced into the armed forces because of lack of education

136

■ mployr^ient opportunities* Once in the army, we are faced with the
u. and most direct forms of discipline and class oppi cssion*

The rebellion in the armed forces comes from the same causes that
kd young Third World people and white youth to rebel in other
d.othnhons of US society. GIs have raised deep questions about the right of
ruSeo: to rule, of the armed forces to command, of the supposed right to
ajxd kill women, children and men in VietTianu The realities of
fcghtir.g such a vengeful yet totally unjust war as the war in Vietnam broke
ior ii numy institutional and cultural forms that have kept the armed forces
togchw: as a so-called ''proud fighting unit*”

There has been GI rebellion within the armed forces during every
Ud' war of expansion, hut the defeat of US forces in Vietnam combined wdth
■he Rlack rebellion at home accelerated the opposition into a full

crisis. The justification for war grew thin: no one w^anted to die in this
; cue h e ?^exused to fight and burned our draft cards, left the country, and
rien;cc:f^Tared against the war. Instead of going on patroU m,^ny units w^ould
head out a few^ hundred yards and sack out for the nighU A generalized
>d:icUi"hoo from military discipline developed, Impenalism needs wulling
but rewer and fewer could be found.

resistance and solidarity of Black GIs set the terms of the
■h ryvic kuil galvanized others. In the racist army^ Third World soldiers made
c ihh' of t!ie combat casualties. Slogans of resistance developed: “No
V:c; ■ cvei Called me nigger;” “Don’t fight overseas for wdiat you don’t
bkve at home/'

A O' ricks on the brass, subversion of the military machinery, and
c;.c:. ::: ho^:t;i!ions spread among GIs, On occasion, ^vhoie units reiused to
: CLC erders —both in Vietnam and in the US at the DemoersUe National

137

Convention in 1968. Thousands of young people who became the dedicated
enemies of imperialism were trained in weaponry and combat* Veterans who
came back to the US organized against the war and led a national campaign
against war crimes* One of the most dramatic moments in the anti-war
movement was in April 1971, when the Vietnam Veterans Against the War
threw away their war medals at the White House*

Veterans face chronic unemployment, inadequate medical
treatment, unjust benefit payments and drug addiction at home. Vets are
plagued by an oppressive discharge system which codes young men according
to the recommendations of the ruling brass* This system creates a blacklist
on the labor market against many returning veterans, especially those who
didn’t toe the line*

The revolt in the army is antidmperialist class struggle on the
highest level, led by Third World GIs but with many white working-class
people involved. This revolt involves cultural insubordination, political
education, direct action and mass participation in armed resistance and
sabotage* As a result we have arrived at a new political situation; the ruling
class can no longer confidently depend on the armed forces to do the dirty
work of empire in all parts of the world.

The great injustice of this system is that it leaves its potential
unrealized while maintaining scarcity for billions of people.

US society is corrupted by the values that necessarily
accompany piracy —racism, greed, competitiveness, brutality,
sexism, c^ousness. The ruling class calls the backward,
criminal aspects of culture into being and sets them into
motion. The society is the rat-race, marked by an antisocial
premhim on individualism. There is a stark poverty for
masses of people matenally and culturally, a poverty in the
Cfuaiity of life.

As imperialist crisis deepens, the entire fabric of social
control ie tightened and becomes more severe.

Third World peoples in the US, and also women, youth and
members of the armed forces have shown the most consistent
initiative and practice as measured by the decisive
anti-imperialist struggle of this entire period; the war in
Vietnam. These groups have been the carriers of proletarian
internationalism for this time.

138

VI. AGAINST THE COMMON
ENEMY

This is a call to organize the people and to act. We must now apply
our analysis to our particular situation, mobilize the masses and fight. Our
goal for this period is to help build a mass anti-imperialist movement and to
build the armed struggle, the guerrilla forces. Legal and clandestine struggle
are both necessary: agitation and attack, peaceful methods and violent
methods, sometimes organizing the people step-by-step, and sometimes
taking a leap thru action to a new level. Slass work and armed struggle are
united in revolution: each needs to support and affirm and complement the
other. These are different fronts, interdependent and allied against the
common enemy.

Aboveground and underground, we face the same political
questions: Who do we organize V How do we bring our politics to life in
practice ? How do we sustain the struggle ?

Our enemy is US imperialism, the enemy of all humankind. Our
goal is to attack imperialism’s ability to exploit and wage war against all
oppressed peoples. Our final goal is the complete destruction of imperialism,
the seizure of the means of production and the building of socialism. To
create the conditions in which we can take the offensive, destroy the old
system and build a new life, wc must weaken and at least partly destroy the
empire. The weakest points of empire lie in its control of the colonies, and
this is why Third World liberation is leading the struggle against imperialism.

We need organization. Acti\ists are searching for direction —some
common ideas, strategy, and practice to unite around. It is frustrating and
crippling to individual revolutionaries and groups to have no unified impact
on history as it is being made. We all feel the need to work as part of a
whole, larger than ourselves, to see our individual contributions add up to
something meaningful. Organization unites, gives direction and bn^adth to
particular political work. Activists and militants want to build something
bigger, where activity leads to shared results, where masses of people can
organize their strength. Anti-imperialist organization is what is needed.

139

We believe that communist-minded organi/jcr.s can take the
initiative now and lead. Move from small to large. Practice and hard work,
boldness and a willingness to intervene in every struggle^ big or little, "Inhere is
room for lots of creativity in application and choice of work. Go to the
people. Organize and mobilize. Build the struggle. Read and study. Carry
your hooks. There is no substitute for practice in determining the
revolutionary path. Conditions arc developing more rapidly than is easily
realized. This is not yet a program; rather it is an ideological foundation and
the tools for building agitational work.

GO TO THE PEOPLE

The US people entered the 70’s weary of w^ar, skeptical of
government leaders, uncertain about the future. Masses of people have been
torn aw^ay from imperial mythology, from the standard of male supremacy,
from allegiance to the state. In search of more drastic solutions to the
current social dislocations, people open to the possibility of revolutionary
consciousness. The 70\s bring inflation, recession, unemployment, the
chance of w^ar, and crisis after crisis in the lives of millions here. \Vc can
foresee a time of food riots, unemployment councils, tenant's anli-eviciion
associations, neighborhood groups, anti-war organizations. The left must
organize itself to understand the continuous crises of our time and mobilize
the discontent into a force for freedom.

Organize poor and w^orking people. Go to the neighborhoods, the
schools, the social institutions, the work places. Agitate, Create struggle.
Link up the issues that describe the system* Tell the truth.

We believe that radical teachers should w^ork in schools in w^orking
class neighborhoods, in community or junior colleges. Radicalize other
teachers, organize the parents, teach and encourage your students. Health
workers can choose hospitals and clinics in poor communities. Cultural
activists, street players, artists, writers should propagandize and relate to
poor and working people. Community-eontroDed and counter -institutions
should be made into insurgent bases.

Organize among youth. Organize among women. Communists
should play a big role in these movements, these popular upheavals wdiieh
spawned us. This is our strength. Revolutionize existing projects and
movements, analyze real situations, intervene with a revolutionary
antidmpcrialist perspective.

Organize to survive. Support the people's right to food, adequate
shelter and decent health care. Oppose HEW' attacks on women and the
poor. Fight to live.

Impeach Nixon and jail him for his major crimes. He is one of the
top criminals of the century, a w^armaker, a lifetaker. His isolation and
exposed condition is the mirror-image of US defeat in Vietnam. Nixon
merits the people's justice.

140

POLITICS IN COMMAND

There are a thousand threads of forward motion in the social
explosion of our times. A thousand tlireads to untangle and engage. Find a
way for everyone to fi^t the enemy. Unite the anti-imperialists. There are
some politics that are necessary for successful activity: things to carry with
us in our work.

Internationalism

Revolutionaries are internationalists. Our job is to build
international class consciousness, to make connections among people. A
good program must synthesize —not separate- the struggles of Third World
peoples with our own: to uncover the relationship between Watergate and
the Vietnam War, to nourish our identification with the struggle of Cuban
women rather than our distinctness, to find the commonality between the
white worker and the unemployed Puerto Rican. A good program mobilizes
and teaches.

The rulers scapegoat Third World people for the failures of the
system. They say: “The American people are being deprived of their right to
oil by the Arabs;” “Welfare mothers, not the defense budget, are responsible
for higher taxes;” “Chilean socialism stole our copper mines.” We cannot
allow the maintenance of a pacified sector of privileged workers here; rather
we can find ways to identify our interests with the interests of all oppressed
people everywhere and sharpen the class struggle.

Liberal,anti* internationalist slogans have been put forth throughout
the history of our movement: “You can only organize people around their
own interest,” “Don’t fight other people’s battles.” “Support for Third
World struggles is ‘guilt’ politics.” These slogans encourage the belief that
oppression is individual and must be fought by small groups distinct from
and against other groups. These slogans assume that the individualism,
narrowness and fear that are a major part of the socializing process here
should be accepted by movement programs. They emphasize competition, a
short-term sense of the struggle, and feed racism and all kinds of chauvinism.
We think that organizers should oppose the liberal slogans with the
communist slogan: “Fight US imperialism, the common enemy.”

How to move?

—Oppose nuclear war and US tlireat of nuclear war. Defeat nuclear
sabre-rattling.

—Oppose imperialist war and aggression wherever it occurs. Oppose
US armed intervention. Defend Indochina from future attacks. Get the US
out of the Mideast. Independence for Puerto Rico

—Also, watch for the quiet but sinister ways warfare is waged on
sisters and brothers in the Third World. Expose and oppose AID programs,
cultural and economic penetration, the multinational corporations,
population control. Don’t let them sneak around.

—Oppose racism in practice. Racism is the main and most
consistent weapon for holding back the revolutionary struggle. Skin color
will be a brand to turn proletarians against one another until this brand is
decisively rejected by white folks. The oppressed nation of Black people is
the leading anti-imperialist force in our country. No doubt about it. History,

141

confjiiuily, miliiancy —even in hard limes- Black and other Third World
leadership lias, in recent years, been the most internationalist and the most
militant. Racism cuts ns up, cuts us off from this leadership. All vestiges of
racist thinking or action among revolutionaries must be attacked in the most
fortliright manner, No quarter can be given to racism in our relations uith
the people we are organizing. We must learn how to reject ami expose the
racism without rejecting the person- Represent solidarity wdth Third World
people whenever possible.

-Win a base of support for prison struggles and oppose attacks by
tlic state on Third World revolutionaries. The greater the resistance by the
people, the more widespread and successful, the greater will be the
repression from tbe state. We can prepare for future repression by planning
the next stage of advance and attack. Today people are confronted by
prisons, courts, military-injustice and raeism,po)ice brutality, spying on and
controlling of cirilian life, the terror of rape, discrimination, channeling and
brainwashing. Does this constilutc fascism or a threat of fascism? Again the
main thing is the distinction between oppressor and oppressed nations. Third
World people have been living under fascist conditions for generations; at the
same time, the majority population feels it has some democratic rights u^orth
defending. These contradictory perceptions reveal something that is true:
fascism in the oppressor nation is the application here of the colonial policies
of empire. It is selective and partial. It has ahvays been applied to Native
Americans, Black people, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, the oppressed generally as
wtII as those wlio unite wulh the oppressed —radicals, reds.

Fascism in this country is not a ehalleuge to those in power by
some more reactionary gang on the outside. Fascism is perpetrated on Third
Worhi people from the seats of power: the Pentagon, the Congress, the White
llous(% the Supreme Court. In these places liberal and fascist tendencies
compete, hut they also connive and conspire. Our strategy must be unity
against existing fascism for the liberation of all oppressed people. Imprisoned
fighters face the brunt of fascist repression and are a center of our struggle.
A solid bridge of communications, news, politics and si^pport sustain sisters
and brothers under brutal isolation and torture, makes a difference in the
treatment of political prisoners and their ehanee.s of release. Connections
maximize the impact of prison politics as an essential and leading part of our
movement. Support Ruehcll Magee. Defend the Attica brothers,

-Like Dr. Du Bois said, "The problem of the twentieth century is
the problem of tbe color line/' It’s our view that wdiite revolutionaries
should look lowaid building principled alliances, coalitions and Avorking
relationships with Third World people when possible. Support for
self-determination can't be an excuse for failure to engage with Third World
revolutionaries in day-to-day work, A new practice should develop in which w^e
learn from, struggle with, but donT prejudge or attempt to direct ThirdWorld
freedom fighters. Full understanding and support for self-determination is
the basis for this kind of getting together. Win an understanding of the right
of o pprcs.se d peoples to determine their ow n destinies.

—Read Black and Third World publications. Understand the
riclmcss of llie movements, the current debates, the direction and grow^lh of
struggles. Study Malcolm and George Jackson. Learn from the great teachers.

142

WOMEN AND REVOLUTION

The women^s movement has changed the consciousness of millions
of women, and the crises of US society are creating resistance and
revolutionaries among women every day* This is a good time to do a lot of
organizing among women, to bring the full scope of anti-imperialist and
revolutionary politics into women’s lives* Storm the institutions which
oppress women* Direct our force against the men who control these
institutions.

—Support Assata Shakur, Marilyn Buck, Lolita Lebron and other
women in prisons* Demonstrate to free our sisters in the Saigon jails*

—It is our view that women working in revolutionary organizations
with men should organize themselves into women’s groups, sections,
brigades, caucuses to build our solidarity, to oppose sexism, to reach out,
involve, organize among women and to strive together for the full liberation
of women,

—Sexism within the culture of the revolutionary movement denies
the full contribution of women and distorts political direction. We need an
anti-sexist revolution in this country to create the basis for a new society
which genuinely empowers women. The revolution must be fought for
women as well as by women*

—Sexism manifests itself in relationships among people, and must
be fought on this level too. Men must make a continuing commitment to
understanding and changing sexist ways. Criticism and self-criticism are our
tools for this struggle: fanshen, the turning over, transformation*

MILITANCY

A movement has no reason to exist if it doesn’t fight* The system
needs to be overthrown; revolutionaries must prepare for that necessity at all
points along the way. Revolutionary movements must be contending for
power, planning how to contend for power, or rfecovering from setbacks in
contending for power. Certainly every movement must learn to fight
correctly, sometimes retreating, sometimes advancing* But fighting the
enemy must be its reason for being* We build a fighting movement.

143

Militancy stirs the imagination ard raises the vision of victory.
Militancy in a street demonstration^ in a courtroono in a rally, in a prison
takeover, is recognized and respected as an uncompromising statement. It is
a confrontation with the opposing system. Involving people in militant
action trains and teaches. It is both an example and a strategy. Militant
action is related to the understanidng that the struggle is not merely for
separate issues but is ultimately for power ““necessarily including armed
struggle to defeat the oppressive forces of state. To leave people unprepared
to fight the state is to seriously mislead about the inevitable natine of what
lies ahead.

Some on the left dissociate mass struggle from revolutionary
violence and condemn any act of public militancy or armed struggle as
adventurist. This is characteristic of oppressor-nation movements where
violence is raised to a question of abstract principle, and the illusion is
fostered that imperialism will decay peacefully: ‘"Violence turns people off,”
“]t"s loo early,” “Violence only brings down repression.”

—The movement should argue for and explain armed action,
develop parallel strategies, openly support the thrust and political content of
revolutionary armed actions, claim and spread the message of struggle, help
create the “sea” for the guerrillas to swum in.DouT talk to the FBI, Resist
grand jury probes of revolutionary struggles. Laying the basis for armed
Struggle is also the responsibility of mass organizers.

—From the very beginning of guerriila action, mass armed
capability develops. Its spontaneity will be slowly transformed into the
energy of a popular armed force.

-Many levels of clandestine propaganda actioir can be carried out
which spread the consciousness of action and give people a way to learn.
Spray^painting, rip-offs of corporate files, blood on the murderers. We have
done these types of action ourselves, including stinkbombing a Rockefeller
appearance in N.Y,C. and doing the same to the mouthpieces of the Chile
junta when they travelled in the US after the murder of Allende. Build a
people's militia.

—A successful movement needs to keep part of its organization
away from the eyes of the state. This shordd be part of the practice of every
revolutionary. The survival and continuity of the revolutionary movement,
of the activists and the supporters over a long period of time, depends on
having networks and resources not exposed to computer patterns, electronic
surveillance and infiltration of the repressive apparatus. The continued
existence of underground organizations shows this can be done.

—Building a capacity to survive over time is no substitute for
militancy now in our daily work. An uncompromising, confrontational
approach to political w^ork is the best way to inspire the people, build
organization, and learn to fight.

REVOLUTION

This is a deathly culture. It beats its children and discards its old
people, imprisons its rebels and drinks itself to death. It breeds and educates
us to be socially irresponsible, arrogant, ignorant and anti-political We are
the most, technologic ally advanced people in the world and the most
politically and socially backward.

The quality of life of a Chinese peasant is better than ours. The
Chinese have free and adequate health care, a meaningful political education,
productive work, a place to live, something to eat and each has a sense of her
or himself as part of a whole people’s shared historical purpose. We may eat
more and have more access to gadgets, but we arc constantly driven by
competition, insecurity, uncertainty and fear. Work is wasteful and
meaningless and other people are frightening and. hateful. This is no way to
live.

Anti-imperialism is our cultural revolution. We must rescue
ourselves from the consequences of being the base area for imperialism —the
base area for war, piracy, rape and murder, Jn this reclamation process, we
come to a better understanding of our history and ourselves. This is not for a
small group but for millions of people. Much has happened in the world and
in the US to move this process along. Few people really believe anymore in
the great civilizing leadership role of the US, Few still think that capitalism is
the best of all possible ways to meet the economic needs of the world’s
peoples, or that Black and Third World people are sub-human labor material
destined to support the more av or th while activities of white supermen. Few
really believe that men will go on indefinitely monopolizing power in a
supremacist anti-women society. Stated simply, our strategy is to base
ourselves on the trends of change, to revolutionize and push them on, and to
intervene in everything.

Where do the US people took to learn about social revolution and
consciousness, struggle and purpose?A decade of resistance in Vietnam
demonstrated to highly ‘'developed” Westerners that we have everything to
learn from “underdeveloped” peoples. The revolutionary struggle is the
social form from which will deal with ihe crisis of imperialism in decline. We
learn from T^hird World people who resist US tyranny, with a unity born in a
sense of collective power and purpose. We learn from our own history and
examples of courage, struggle and communality which are here for us to
search out and celebrate.

Our movement must discard the baggage of the oppressor society
and become new women and new men, as Che taught. All forms of racism,
class prejudice, and male chauvinism must be torn out by the roots. For us,
proletarianization means recognizing the urgency of revolution as the only
solution to our own problems and the survival of all oppressed people. It
means commitment, casting our lot with the collective interest and
discarding the privileges of einpire. It means recognizing that revolution is a
lifetime of fighting and transfer in at ion , a risky business and ultimately a
decisive struggle against the forces of death.

Proletarianization is a process that is necessarily on-going.
Breaking-thru to a higher level of engagement and commitment in 1968 is no
guarantee that the level will be sustained in 1974. Standing still over time is
sliding back. Commitment and engagement must be continually renewed.

145

We create the seeds of the new society in the struggle for the
destruction of the empire. For our generation that has meant the birth of
communalism and collective work in the most individualist, competitive
society in the world. Revolution is the midwife bringing the new society into
being from the old.

The culture of our communities, the people we try to become, are
forged in the process of revolutionary war —the struggle for liberation. We
are called on to commit ourselves to this struggle, and time is pressing.
People are already dying. Lives are wasted and W'orn. Life itself depends on
our ability to deal a swift death blow to the monster.

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bibliography:

These books have been a good part of the background and basis of study for
writing this paper;

Salvador AUende

Speech to the U.N., November 1972

Imamu Amiri Baraka
Harold Baron
Raymond Barrio
Black Liberation Army
James Boggs
Boyer and Moraid
Fred Branfman, ed.

H. Rap Brown
Wilfred Burchett
Meyer Burning Bear

Raise Race Rays Raze
Black Labor
The Plum Plum Pickers
Break de Chains
Racism and the Class Struggle
Labor’s Untold Story
Voices from the Plain of Jars
Die Nigger Die
Vietnam Will Win
New Indian Resistance

Amilcar Cabral

Toni Cade, ed.

Stokely Carmichael
Fidel Castro

Christopher Caudwell
Sharon Curtin

W.E.B.DuBois

Ehrenreich and English
Frederick Engels,
Eleanor Leacock, ed.

Return to the Source
Revolution in Guine
The Black Woman
Stokely Speaks
Fidel in Chile
History will Absolve Me
Studies in a Dying Culture
Nobody Ever Died of Old Age

Black Reconstruction
John Brown

Witches, Midwives and Healers
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

Franz Fanon
Carlos Feliciano
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
James Forman

Eduardo Galea no
John Gerassi, ed.

Vo Nguyen Giap
Rudolfo Gonzalez
Felix Greene
Che Guevara

The Wretched of the Earth
Carlos Feliciano
Rebel Girl

The Making of Black Revolutionaries

Open Veins of Latin America
The Coming of the New International
The Military Art of Peoples War
Yo Soy Joaquin
The Enemy
Message to the Tricontinental

150

Lorraine Hansberry

Les Blancs

History of the Vietnam Workers Party
Ho Chi Minh Prison Diary

Bernard Fall, ed. Ho Chi Minh on Revolution

Indochina Peace Campaign Women Under Torture

George Jackson Blood in My Eye

C.L.R. James The Atlantic Slave Trade

Kathy Kahn

Hillbilly Women

Aileen S. Kraditor

Ideas of the Women's Suffrage Movement

Latin American Council of Coordination statement: MIR, Tupamaros, ERP

and ELN.

V.I. Lenin Imperialism

State and Revolution
What is to be Done?
Selected Works

Gerda Lerner, ed. Black Women in White America

Aitredo Lopez Puerto Rican Papers

Clayton Van Lydegraf Object is to Win and Movement and the Workers

Harry Magdoff
Malcolm X

Mao Tse-Tung

Karl Marx

Bonnie Mass

William McAdoo
Sam Melville

The Age of Imperiabsm
Malcolm X Speaks
Malcolm X on Afro-American History
On Contradiction
On Practice
Selected Works
Capital (section on primitive accumulation)
Communist Manifesto
Value, Price and Profit
Selected Works
The Political Economy of Population
Control in Latin America
Pre-Civil War Black Nationalism
Letters from Attica

Juliet Mitchell
Anne Moody

Jan Myrdal and Gun Kessle

W'omen’s Estate
Coming of Age in Mississippi
Angkor

Truman Nelson

The Right of Revolution

Panther 21
Pham Thi Quyen

Loci; for Me in the Whirlwind
The Way He Lived

Jonah Raskin My tl to logy of Imperialism

John Reed Insurgent Mexico

Report of the Chinese Communist Party to the 1 0th Parly Congress
Sheila Rowbothan Womeii, Resistance and Revolution

Mari Sandoz

Crazy Horse

151

Miriam Schnesr, eu. Feminism: the Essentia! Historical Wriv

Miriam and Walter Srhneir
Ruth Sidel
Edgar Snow
Stan Steiner
Han Suyin

Paul Sweezy and Harr)' Mag doff

Invitation to an /ncri
Wonien-and Child Care i)i ■'’[
The Long Revoiiii

The .Morriivig CeJ
Dynamics of CS rifoisl

Studs Terkel
Truong Chinh
Fawaz Turki

On the Role and Tasks of the I n

The D

Eric Williams Capitalism ana

Akwesasne Notes
Black Scholar
MER.IP Reports
Monthly Review
NACLA Reports
Triple Jeopardy
Vietnamese Studies

.152

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